Improved symmetric and non-symmetric solvers for FE calculations

This paper presents an assessment of the efficiency of a set of new routines for the solution of linear equations compared to a selection of available solver packages. All solvers utilize a well-established elimination technique with skyline storage. Symmetric as well as non-symmetric problems are considered. The significance of improving the code (but not the numerical algorithm per se) as compared to the compiler is discussed. A major conclusion is that the effectiveness of the compiler may be as important as the code itself. On comparison it appeared that the newly developed solvers showed consistently better performance for the chosen test problems.