Parallel Multifrontal Sparse Solvers

Robert LucasDirector of the Computational Sciences Division
USC Information Sciences InstituteAbstract:Solving large sparse systems of linear equations is the computational bottleneck in many applications. These include such diverse fields as mechanical computer aided engineering (MCAE) and interior point methods from optimization. Therefore, over the last three decades, a great deal of research has gone into porting such algorithms to large-scale, parallel systems. This talk will review the multifrontal method for factoring such linear systems and the experience gained porting it to distributed memory (MPI), shared memory (OpenMP), and SIMD systems. The talk will conclude with lessons learned and a discussion of some of the open research problems in this area.Biography:Dr. Robert F. Lucas is the Director of the Computational Sciences Division of the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute (ISI). There he manages research in computer architecture, VLSI, compilers and other software tools. Prior to joining ISI, he was the Head of the High Performance Computing Research Department in the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. There he oversaw work in scientific data management, visualization, numerical algorithms, and scientific applications. Prior to joining NERSC, Dr. Lucas was the Deputy Director of DARPA's Information Technology Office. He also served as DARPA's Program Manager for Scalable Computing Systems and Data-Intensive Computing. From 1988 to 1998 he was a member of the research staff of the Institute for Defense Analyses, Center for Computing Sciences. From 1979 to 1984 he was a member of the Technical Staff of the Hughes Aircraft Company. Dr. Lucas received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1980, 1983, and 1988 respectively.Host: Aiichiro Nakano

Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Nancy Levien