Design and Implementation of a Scalable Parallel Direct Solver for Sparse Symmetric Positive De nite Systems : Preliminary Results

Solving large sparse systems of linear equations is at the core of many problems in engineering and scienti c computing. It has long been a challenge to develop parallel formulations of sparse direct solvers due to several di erent complex steps involved in the process. In this paper, we describe one of the rst e cient, practical, and robust parallel solvers for sparse symmetric positive de nite linear systems that we have developed and discuss the algorithmic and implementation issues involved in its development.