Parallel iterative solvers for sparse linear systems in circuit simulation

For the solution of sparse linear systems from circuit simulation whose coefficient matrices include a few dense rows and columns, a parallel iterative algorithm with distributed Schur complement preconditioning is presented. The parallel efficiency of the solver is increased by transforming the equation system into a problem without dense rows and columns as well as by exploitation of parallel graph partitioning methods. The costs of local, incomplete LU decompositions are decreased by fill-in reducing reordering methods of the matrix and a threshold strategy for the factorization. The efficiency of the parallel solver is demonstrated with real circuit simulation problems on PC clusters. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.