Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient Method for Solution of Large Finite Element Problems on CPU and GPU

Abstract

In this article the preconditioned conjugate gradient (PCG) method, realized on GPU and intended to solution of large finite element problems of structural mechanics, is considered. The mathematical formulation of problem results in solution of linear equation sets with sparse symmetrical positive definite matrices. The authors use incomplete Cholesky factorization by value approach, based on technique of sparse matrices, for creation of efficient preconditioning, which ensures a stable convergence for weakly conditioned problems mentioned above. The research focuses on realization of PCG solver on GPU with using of CUBLAS and CUSPARSE libraries. Taking into account a restricted amount of GPU core memory, the efficiency and reliability of GPU PCG solver are checked and these factors are compared with data obtained with using of CPU version of this solver, working on large amount of RAM. The real-life large problems, taken from SCAD Soft collection, are considered for such a comparison.