The Multifrontal Solution of Indefinite Sparse Symmetric Linear

Abstract

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.