The design of a new frontal code for solving sparse unsymmetric systems

We describethe design, implementation, and performance of a frontal code for the solution of large, sparse, unsymmetric systems of linear equations. The resulting software package, MA42, is included in Release 11 of the Harwell Subroutine Library and is intended to supersede the earlier MA32 package. We discuss in detail the extensive use of higher-level BLAS kernels within MA42 and illustrate the performance on a range of practical problems on a CRAY Y-MP, an IBM 3090, and an IBM RISC System/6000. We examine extending the frontal solution scheme ti use multiple fronts to allow MA42 tn be run in parallel. We indicate some directions for future development