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Limitations and Future Plans

The user should be aware of a few limitations in BlockSolve:

Another limitation involves coloring options. It is possible with the current version that if the portion of the matrix structure contained on some processors is very different from the structure contained on other processors, then the number of colors on each of these processors can be quite different. Such a situation could arise if different-order finite elements are used on different processors (but would not arise just by applying boundary conditions to some processors, but not to others). This imbalance in the number of processors could degrade performance. We are currently working on a new coloring algorithm that will address this situation.

We will also be further integrating BlockSolve into the Chameleon package. This integration should be largely transparent to the user, but will result in less code in the BlockSolve package.

A long-term plan is the extension of BlockSolve to nonsymmetric systems.


sgreen@cs.utk.edu