Comparison of the Structure of Equation Systems and the GPU Multifrontal Solver for Finite Difference, Collocation and Finite Element Method

AbstractThe article is an in-depth comparison of numerical solvers and corresponding solution pro- cesses of the systems of algebraic equations resulting from finite difference, collocation, and finite element approximations. The paper considers recently developed isogeometric versions of the collocation and finite element methods, employing B-splines for the computations and ensuring Cp−1 continuity on the borders of elements for the B-splines of the order p. For solving the systems, we use our GPU implementation of the state-of-the-art parallel multifrontal solver, which leverages modern GPU architectures and allows to reduce the complexity. We analyze the structures of linear equation systems resulting from each of the methods and how different matrix structures lead to different multifrontal solver elimination trees. The paper also considers the flows of multifrontal solver depending on the originally employed method