Numerical Algorithms 2(1992) 337-350 337 Limits of parallelism in explicit ODE methods

Numerical methods for ordinary initial value problems that do not depend on special properties of the system are usually found in the class of linear multistage multivalue methods, first formulated by J.C. Butcher. Among these the explicit methods are easiest o implement. For these reasons there has been considerable research activity devoted to generating methods of this class which utilize independent function evaluations that can be performed in parallel. Each such group of concurrent function evaluations can be regarded as a stage of the method. However, it turns out that parallelism affords only limited opportunity for reducing the computing time with such methods. This is most evident for the simple linear homogeneous constant-coefficient test problem, whose solution is essen-tially a matter of approximating the exponential by an algebraic function. For a given number of stages and a given number of saved values, parallelism offers a somewhat enlarged set of algebraic functions from which to choose. However, there is absolutely no benefit in having the degree of parallelism (number of processors) exceed the number of saved values of the method. Thus, in particular, parallel one-step methods offer no speedup over serial one-step methods for the standard linear test problem. Although the implication of this result for general nonlinear problems is unclear, there are indications that dramatic speedups are not possible in general. Also given are some results relevant o the construc-tion of methods