Parallel direct solver for solving systems of linear equations resulting from finite element method on multi-core desktops and workstations

This paper presents the PARFES—parallel sparse direct solver for solving systems of linear equations resulting from the finite element method applied to problems of structural and solid mechanics. PARFES is intended for use on shared-memory multi-core desktops, laptops and workstations. The solver’s high performance relies on the use of a specific algorithm for the procedure of block matrix multiplication using AVX instructions for the vectorization of computations, and the parallelizing approach that ensures a balanced processor load. The block looking-left factorization algorithm allows for the use of disk memory if the dimensionality of problem exceeds the capacity of RAM.