The Design and Implementation of SOLAR,
a Portable Library for Scalable Out-of-Core Linear Algebra
Computations
Sivan Toledo
Fred G. Gustavson
IBM T. J. Watson
Abstract:
SOLAR is a portable high-performance library for out-of-core dense
matrix computations. It combines portability with high performance by
using existing high-performance in-core subroutine libraries and by
using an optimized matrix input-output library. SOLAR works on
parallel computers, workstations, and personal computers. It supports
in-core computations on both shared-memory and distributed-memory
machines, and its matrix input-output library supports both
conventional I/O interfaces and parallel I/O interfaces. This paper
discusses the overall design of SOLAR, its interfaces, and the design
of several important subroutines. Experimental results show that
SOLAR can factor on a single workstation an out-of-core
positive-definite symmetric matrix at a rate exceeding 215 Mflops, and
an out-of-core general matrix at a rate exceeding 195 Mflops. Less
than 16% of the running time is spent on I/O in these computations.
These results indicate that SOLAR's portability does not compromise
its performance. We expect that the combination of portability,
modularity, and the use of a high-level I/O interface will make the
library an important platform for research on out-of-core algorithms
and on parallel I/O.
David Kotz --
Last modified: Wed Jan 31 16:04:04 1996