Numerical behaviour of the modified gram-schmidt GMRES implementation

In [6] the Generalized Minimal Residual Method (GMRES) which constructs the Arnoldi basis and then solves the transformed least squares problem was studied. It was proved that GMRES with the Householder orthogonalization-based implementation of the Arnoldi process (HHA), see [9], is backward stable. In practical computations, however, the Householder orthogonalization is too expensive, and it is usually replaced by the modified Gram-Schmidt process (MGSA). Unlike the HHA case, in the MGSA implementation the orthogonality of the Arnoldi basis vectors is not preserved near the level of machine precision. Despite this, the MGSA-GMRES performs surprisingly well, and its convergence behaviour and the ultimately attainable accuracy do not differ significantly from those of the HHA-GMRES. As it was observed, but not explained, in [6], it is thelinear independence of the Arnoldi basis, not the orthogonality near machine precision, that is important. Until the linear independence of the basis vectors is nearly lost, the norms of the residuals in the MGSA implementation of GMRES match those of the HHA implementation despite the more significant loss of orthogonality.