Re: adding SNESSetLinearSolve()

["Matthew Knepley" <knepley@xxxxxxxxx>]

Actually, making the regularization parameter independent for each
process is much more efficient. Gene Golub had a poster on this at
the last SIAM CS&E meeting.

   Matt

On Nov 1, 2007 9:24 AM, Lisandro Dalcin <dalcinl@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 10/31/07, Barry Smith <bsmith@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >   Lisandro,
> >    A followup to our previous discussion. It sounds to me like you
> > are "actually" solving an n+1 unknown nonlinear problem where the
> > "special" unknown is kept secret from SNES and managed somehow by the
> > application code?
>
> That's exactly the case. Furthermore, this 'special' unknown in just a
> regularization parameter who tends to zero as the nonlinear solution
> is reached. Unfortunatelly, this unknow is coupled with all other
> degree of freedom, thus generating a full dense row and a dense column
> in the Jacobian matrix. But fortunatelly, the special unknown is just
> a single scalar, thus computing the schur complement is feasible, but
> requires two linear solves with the other 'sparse' block of the
> Jacobian.
>
> >   You can guess how I feel about this :-).
>
> Yes, of course. I agree that PETSc API must be consistent and clean.
> But I also feel that some time I need more features. Please remember I
> use PETSc exclusively from Python. And then is so easy to manage
> complicated application setups. But at some point I need more
> low-level support from PETSc to make it working.
>
> For example, I would love to have SNESSetPresolve/SNESSetPostSolve and
> SNESSetPreStep/SNESSetPostStep, and perhaps a
> SNESSetPreLinearSolve/SNESSetPostLinearSolve. Of course, this make the
> API grow with features that are not frecuently needed.
>
> > PETSc/SNES is suppose
> > to be good enough to allow you to feed it the ENTIRE nonlinear problem
> > in a way that would allow as efficient solution as if you "handled the
> > special unknown" specially.
>
> Even for my particular case? Can I pass-over the issue with the full
> denses rows and columns?
>
> > In particular for this problem the intended
> > solution is to use the PETSc DMComposite object via DMCompositeCreate()
> >   You may want to look at this construct to see if it is suitable
> > for your friends needs. And what we need to add (note that though DMComposite
> > can be used with DMMG it does not have to be, it can be used directly
> > with a SNES also.
>
> I'll definitely take a loop ASAP.
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Lisandro Dalcín
> ---------------
> Centro Internacional de Métodos Computacionales en Ingeniería (CIMEC)
> Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química (INTEC)
> Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET)
> PTLC - Güemes 3450, (3000) Santa Fe, Argentina
> Tel/Fax: +54-(0)342-451.1594
>
>



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What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their
experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which
their experiments lead.
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