Sparse Matrix Libraries in C++ for High Performance Architectures

We describe an object oriented sparse matrix library in C++ designed for portability and performance across a wide class of machine architectures. Besides simplifying the subroutine interface, the object oriented design allows the same driving code to be used for various sparse matrix formats, thus addressing many of the difficulties encountered with the typical approach to sparse matrix libraries. We also discuss the design of a C++ library for implementing various iterative methods for solving linear systems of equations. Performance results indicate that the C++ codes are competitive with optimized Fortran. 1 Introduction Sparse matrices are pervasive in scientific and engineering application codes. They often arise from finite difference, finite element, or finite volume discretizations of PDEs (e.g., in computational fluid dynamics) or from discrete, network-type problems (e.g., in circuit simulation). Over the past two decades, a number of research efforts have resulted in spars..