• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.155-168
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• 2002

In this paper, some efficient implementation techniques for the multifrontal method, which can be used to compute the Cholesky factor of a symmetric positive definite matrix, are presented. In order to use the cache effect in the cache-based computer architecture, a hybrid method for factorizing a frontal matrix is considered. This hybrid method uses the column Cholesky method and the submatrix Cholesky method alternatively. Experiments show that the hybrid method speeds up the performance of the supernodal multifrontal method by 5%～10%, and it is superior to the Cholesky method in some problems with dense columns or large frontal matrices.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.387-394
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• 2004

In the structural analysis procedure using finite element technique, the performance of a linear equation solver is critical because the linear equation solving part spends most of the computing time for finite element analysis codes. However, most of researchers are still using inefficient profile-based direct solvers such as the band solver or the skyline solver. In this research, we introduce the multifrontal solution method as an efficient direct solution method for structural analysis, and show the efficiency and performance of the multifrontal solution method by comparing the performance of our own implementation of the multifrontal method with the band solver or the skyline solver. In addition, we also compare the performance of our solver with other implementations of the multifrontal method such as WSMP and MUMPS as well as commercial structural analysis packages such as ABAQUS and NASTRAN. Through the performance test results, the usefulness and efficiency of our domain-wise multifrontal solver for structural analysis is shown.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.40 no.11
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• pp.972-978
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• 2012

This paper discusses the parallelization of multifrontal solution method, widely used for finite element structural analyses, for a shared memory architecture. Multifrontal method is easier than other linear solution methods because the solution procedure implies that unknowns can be eliminated simultaneously. Two innovative ideas are introduced to achieve optimal solver performance on a shared memory computer. Those are pairing two frontal matrices and splitting the frontal matrix in order to reduce the temporal memory space required by independent computing tasks. Performance comparisons between original algorithm and proposed one prove that proposed method is more computationally efficient on current multicore machines.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.13-20
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• 2009

The IPSAP which is a finite element analysis program has been developed for high parallel performance computing. This program consists of various analysis modules - stress, vibration and thermal analysis module, etc. The M orthogonal block Lanczos algorithm with shiftinvert transformation is used for solving eigenvalue problems in the vibration module. And the multifrontal algorithm which is one of the most efficient direct linear equation solvers is applied to factorization and triangular system solving phases in this block Lanczos iteration routine. In this study, the performance enhancement procedures of the IPSAP are composed of the following stages: 1) communication volume minimization of the factorization phase by modifying parallel matrix subroutines. 2) idling time minimization in triangular system solving phase by partial inverse of the frontal matrix and the LCM (least common multiple) concept.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.445-452
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• 2014

This paper discusses the multifrontal direct solution method with out of core storage for large scale structural analysis in a limited computing resource. Large scale structural analysis requires huge amount of memory space and computation, so out of core solution method is needed in limited computing resource. In this research, out of core multifrontal solution algorithm which utilize the small size of physical memory and minimize the amount of access of low speed out of core storage is introduced. Three ideas, which are stack space in lower trianglar part of square factorization matrix, inverse stack data structure and selective data caching and recovery by data block size, are proposed.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.16 no.10
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• pp.1201-1210
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• 2002

A penalty frame method is proposed for the coupled analysis of finite elements with independently modeled substructures. Although previously reported hybrid interface method by Aminpour et al (IJNME, Vol 38, 1995) is accurate and reliable, it requires non-conventional special solution algorithm such as multifrontal solver. In present study, an alternative method has been developed using penalty frame constraints, which results in positive symmetric global stiffness matrices. Thus the conventional skyline solver or band solver can be utilized in the solution routine, which makes the present method applicable in the environment of conventional finite element commercial software. Numerical examples show applicability of the present method.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.79-86
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• 2008

High performance direct-iterative hybrid linear solver for large scale finite element problem is developed. Direct solution method is robust but difficult to parallelize, whereas iterative solution method is opposite for direct method. Therefore, combining two solution methods is desired to get both high performance parallel efficiency and numerical robustness for large scale structural analysis problems. Hybrid method mentioned in this paper is based on FETI-DP (Finite Element Tearing and Interconnecting-Dual Primal method) which has good parallel scalability and efficiency. It is suitable for fourth and second order finite element elliptic problems including structural analysis problems. We are using the hybrid concept of theses two solution method categories, combining the multifrontal solver into FETI-DP based iterative solver. Hybrid solver is implemented for our general structural analysis code, IPSAP.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.361-367
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• 2014

In this paper, task scheduling and load balancing methods of multifrontal solution methods of finite element structural analysis in a modern multicore machine are introduced. Many structural analysis problems have generally irregular grid and many kinds of properties and materials. These irregularities and heterogeneities lead to bottleneck of parallelization and cause idle time to analysis. Therefore, task scheduling and load balancing are desired to reduce inefficiency. Several kinds of multithreaded parallelization methods are presented and comparison between static and dynamic task scheduling are shown. To reduce the idle time caused by irregular partitioned subdomains, computational load balancing methods, Balancing all tasks and minmax task pairing balancing, are invented. Theoretical and actual elapsed time are shown and the reason of their performance gap are discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.41-50
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• 2003

In this paper, nonlinear parallel structural analyses are introduced by using the parallel multifrontal solver and damage localization for 2D and 3D crack models is presented as the application of nonlinear parallel computation. The parallel algorithms related with nonliear reduce the amount of memory used is carried out because many variables should be utilized for this highly nonlinear damage analysis. Also, Riks' continuation method is parallelized to search the solution when strain softening occurs due to damage evolution. For damage localization problem, several computational models having up to around 1-million degree of freedoms are used. The parallel performance in this nonlinear parallel algorithm is shown through these examples and the local variation of damage at crack tip is compared among the models with different degree of freedoms.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2004.04a
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• pp.389-395
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• 2004

We consider the interface between the parallel distributed memory multifrontal solver and the finite element method. We give in detail the requirement and the data structure of parallel FEM interface which includes the element data and the node array. The full procedures of solving a large scale structural problem are assumed to have pre-post processors, of which algorithm is not considered in this paper. The main advantage of implementing the parallel FEM interface is shown up in the case that we use a distributed memory system with a large number of processors to solve a very large scale problem. The memory efficiency and the performance effect are examined by analyzing some examples on the Pegasus cluster system.