MA42 - A new frontal code for solving sparse unsymmetric systems
Iain Duff, J. A. Scott · 1993
We describe the 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 design changes from the earlier code, indicating the way in which they aid clarity, maintainability, and portability. The new design also permits extensive use of higher level BLAS kernels, which aid both modularity and efficiency. We illustrate the performance of our new code on practical problems on a CRAY Y-MP, an IBM 3090, and an IBM RISC System/6000. We indicate some directions for future development.