Amanda Bienz

Amanda Bienz, Robert D. Falgout William Gropp, Luke N. Olson et al.

Algebraic multigrid (AMG) is an $\mathcal{O}(n)$ solution process for many large sparse linear systems. A hierarchy of progressively coarser grids is constructed that utilize complementary relaxation and interpolation operators. High-energy error is reduced by relaxation, while low-energy error is mapped to coarse-grids and reduced there. However, large parallel communication costs often limit parallel scalability. As the multigrid hierarchy is formed, each coarse matrix is formed through a triple matrix product. The resulting coarse-grids often have significantly more nonzeros per row than the original fine-grid operator, thereby generating high parallel communication costs on coarse-levels. In this paper, we introduce a method that systematically removes entries in coarse-grid matrices after the hierarchy is formed, leading to an improved communication costs. We sparsify by removing weakly connected or unimportant entries in the matrix, leading to improved solve time. The main trade-off is that if the heuristic identifying unimportant entries is used too aggressively, then AMG convergence can suffer. To counteract this, the original hierarchy is retained, allowing entries to be reintroduced into the solver hierarchy if convergence is too slow. This enables a balance between communication cost and convergence, as necessary. In this paper we present new algorithms for reducing communication and present a number of computational experiments in support.

Amanda Bienz, Luke Olson, William Gropp

Algebraic multigrid (AMG) is often viewed as a scalable $\mathcal{O}(n)$ solver for sparse linear systems. Yet, parallel AMG lacks scalability due to increasingly large costs associated with communication, both in the initial construction of a multigrid hierarchy as well as the iterative solve phase. This work introduces a parallel implementation of AMG to reduce the cost of communication, yielding an increase in scalability. Standard inter-process communication consists of sending data regardless of the send and receive process locations. Performance tests show notable differences in the cost of intra- and inter-node communication, motivating a restructuring of communication. In this case, the communication schedule takes advantage of the less costly intra-node communication, reducing both the number and size of inter-node messages. Node-centric communication extends to the range of components in both the setup and solve phase of AMG, yielding an increase in the weak and strong scalability of the entire method.