We extend the frontal method for solving linear systems of equations by permitting more than one front to occur at the same time. This enables us to develop code for general symmetric systems. We discuss the orgamzation and implementatmn of a multifrontal code which uses the minimum-degree ordering and indicate how we can solve indefinite systems in a stable manner We illustrate the performance of our code both on the IBM 3033 and on the CRAY-1.

− −Co-Array Fortran, formerly known as F , is a small extension of Fortran 95 for parallel processing. A Co-Array Fortran program is interpreted as if it were replicated a number of times and all copies were executed asynchronously. Each copy has its own set of data objects and is termed an image. The array syntax of Fortran 95 is extended with additional trailing subscripts in square brackets to give a clear and straightforward representation of any access to data that is spread across images.References without square brackets are to local data, so code that can run independently is uncluttered. Only where there are square brackets, or where there is a procedure call and the procedure contains square brackets, is communication between images involved.There are intrinsic procedures to synchronize images, return the number of images, and return the index of the current image.We introduce the extension; give examples to illustrate how clear, powerful, and flexible it can be; and provide a technical definition.

Direct Methods for Sparse Matrices, second edition, is a complete rewrite of the first edition published 30 years ago. Much has changed since that time. Problems have grown greatly in size and complexity; nearly all our examples were of order less than 5,000 in the first edition, and are often more than a million in the second edition. Computer architectures are now much more complex, requiring new ways of adapting algorithms to parallel environments with memory hierarchies. Because the area is such an important one to all of computational science and engineering, a huge amount of research has been done since the first edition, some of it by the authors. This new research is integrated into the text with a clear explanation of the underlying mathematics and algorithms. New research that is described includes new techniques for scaling and error control, new orderings, new combinatorial techniques for partitioning both symmetric and unsymmetric problems, and a detailed description of the multifrontal approach to solving systems that was pioneered by the research of the authors and colleagues. This includes a discussion of techniques for exploiting parallel architectures and new work for indefinite and unsymmetric systems.

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An implementation of Tarj an's algorithm for symmetrically permuting a given matrix to block tmangular form is described. The discussion includes a flowchart of the algorithm, a complexity analysis, and a comparison with the earlier widely used algorithm of Sargent and Westerberg. T~ming results are presented from several experiments using the code developed by the authors.