In Density Functional Theory simulations based on the LAPW method, each self-consistent field cycle comprises dozens of large dense generalized eigenproblems. In contrast to real-space methods, ...eigenpairs solving for problems at distinct cycles have either been believed to be independent or at most very loosely connected. In a recent study (Di Napoli et al., 2012) 13, it was demonstrated that, contrary to belief, successive eigenproblems in a sequence are strongly correlated with one another. In particular, by monitoring the subspace angles between eigenvectors of successive eigenproblems, it was shown that these angles decrease noticeably after the first few iterations and become close to collinear. This last result suggests that we can manipulate the eigenvectors, solving for a specific eigenproblem in a sequence, as an approximate solution for the following eigenproblem. In this work we present results that are in line with this intuition. We provide numerical examples where opportunely selected block iterative eigensolvers benefit from the reuse of eigenvectors by achieving a substantial speed-up. The results presented will eventually open the way to a widespread use of block iterative eigensolvers in ab initio electronic structure codes based on the LAPW approach.
Numerical methods based on rational Krylov spaces have become an indispensable tool of scientific computing. In this thesis we study rational Krylov spaces by considering rational Krylov ...decompositions; matrix relations which, under certain conditions, are associated with these spaces. We investigate the algebraic properties of such decompositions and present an implicit Q theorem for rational Krylov spaces. We derive standard and harmonic Ritz extraction strategies for approximating the eigenpairs of a matrix and for approximating the action of a matrix function onto a vector. While these topics have been considered previously, our approach does not require the last pole to be infinite, which makes the extraction procedure computationally more efficient. Typically, the computationally most expensive component of the rational Arnoldi algorithm for computing a rational Krylov basis is the solution of a large linear system of equations at each iteration. We explore the option of solving several linear systems simultaneously, thus constructing the rational Krylov basis in parallel. If this is not done carefully, the basis being orthogonalized may become poorly conditioned, leading to numerical instabilities in the orthogonalization process. We introduce the new concept of continuation pairs which gives rise to a near-optimal parallelization strategy that allows to control the growth of the condition number of this nonorthogonal basis. As a consequence we obtain a more accurate and reliable parallel rational Arnoldi algorithm. The computational benefits are illustrated using our high performance C++ implementation. We develop an iterative algorithm for solving nonlinear rational least squares problems. The difficulty is in finding the poles of a rational function. For this purpose, at each iteration a rational Krylov decomposition is constructed and a modified linear problem is solved in order to relocate the poles to new ones. Our numerical results indicate that the algorithm, called RKFIT, is well suited for model order reduction of linear time invariant dynamical systems and for optimisation problems related to exponential integration. Furthermore, we derive a strategy for the degree reduction of the approximant obtained by RKFIT. The rational function obtained by RKFIT is represented with the aid of a scalar rational Krylov decomposition and an additional coefficient vector. A function represented in this form is called an RKFUN. We develop efficient methods for the evaluation, pole and root finding, and for performing basic arithmetic operations with RKFUNs. Lastly, we discuss RKToolbox, a rational Krylov toolbox for MATLAB, which implements all our algorithms and is freely available from http://rktoolbox.org. RKToolbox also features an extensive guide and a growing number of examples. In particular, most of our numerical experiments are easily reproducible by downloading the toolbox and running the corresponding example files in MATLAB.
Numerical methods based on rational Krylov spaces have become an indispensable tool of scientific computing. In this thesis we study rational Krylov spaces by considering rational Krylov ...decompositions; matrix relations which, under certain conditions, are associated with these spaces. We investigate the algebraic properties of such decompositions and present an implicit Q theorem for rational Krylov spaces. We derive standard and harmonic Ritz extraction strategies for approximating the eigenpairs of a matrix and for approximating the action of a matrix function onto a vector. While these topics have been considered previously, our approach does not require the last pole to be infinite, which makes the extraction procedure computationally more efficient. Typically, the computationally most expensive component of the rational Arnoldi algorithm for computing a rational Krylov basis is the solution of a large linear system of equations at each iteration. We explore the option of solving several linear systems simultaneously, thus constructing the rational Krylov basis in parallel. If this is not done carefully, the basis being orthogonalized may become poorly conditioned, leading to numerical instabilities in the orthogonalization process. We introduce the new concept of continuation pairs which gives rise to a near-optimal parallelization strategy that allows to control the growth of the condition number of this non orthogonal basis. As a consequence we obtain a more accurate and reliable parallel rational Arnoldi algorithm. The computational benefits are illustrated using our high performance C++ implementation. We develop an iterative algorithm for solving nonlinear rational least squares problems. The difficulty is in finding the poles of a rational function. For this purpose, at each iteration a rational Krylov decomposition is constructed and a modified linear problem is solved in order to relocate the poles to new ones. Our numerical results indicate that the algorithm, called RKFIT, is well suited for model order reduction of linear time invariant dynamical systems and for optimisation problems related to exponential integration. Furthermore, we derive a strategy for the degree reduction of the approximant obtained by RKFIT. The rational function obtained by RKFIT is represented with the aid of a scalar rational Krylov decomposition and an additional coefficient vector. A function represented in this form is called an RKFUN. We develop efficient methods for the evaluation, pole and root finding, and for performing basic arithmetic operations with RKFUNs. Lastly, we discuss RKToolbox, a rational Krylov toolbox for MATLAB, which implements all our algorithms and is freely available from http://rktoolbox.org. RKToolbox also features an extensive guide and a growing number of examples. In particular, most of our numerical experiments are easily reproducible by downloading the toolbox and running the corresponding example files in MATLAB.
In many scientific applications the solution of non-linear differential equations are obtained through the set-up and solution of a number of successive eigenproblems. These eigenproblems can be ...regarded as a sequence whenever the solution of one problem fosters the initialization of the next. In addition, in some eigenproblem sequences there is a connection between the solutions of adjacent eigenproblems. Whenever it is possible to unravel the existence of such a connection, the eigenproblem sequence is said to be correlated. When facing with a sequence of correlated eigenproblems the current strategy amounts to solving each eigenproblem in isolation. We propose a alternative approach which exploits such correlation through the use of an eigensolver based on subspace iteration and accelerated with Chebyshev polynomials (ChFSI). The resulting eigensolver is optimized by minimizing the number of matrix-vector multiplications and parallelized using the Elemental library framework. Numerical results show that ChFSI achieves excellent scalability and is competitive with current dense linear algebra parallel eigensolvers.
In Density Functional Theory simulations based on the LAPW method, each self-consistent field cycle comprises dozens of large dense generalized eigenproblems. In contrast to real-space methods, ...eigenpairs solving for problems at distinct cycles have either been believed to be independent or at most very loosely connected. In a recent study 7, it was demonstrated that, contrary to belief, successive eigenproblems in a sequence are strongly correlated with one another. In particular, by monitoring the subspace angles between eigenvectors of successive eigenproblems, it was shown that these angles decrease noticeably after the first few iterations and become close to collinear. This last result suggests that we can manipulate the eigenvectors, solving for a specific eigenproblem in a sequence, as an approximate solution for the following eigenproblem. In this work we present results that are in line with this intuition. We provide numerical examples where opportunely selected block iterative eigensolvers benefit from the reuse of eigenvectors by achieving a substantial speed-up. The results presented will eventually open the way to a widespread use of block iterative eigensolvers in ab initio electronic structure codes based on the LAPW approach.
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