A new storage scheme for an efficient implementation of the sparse matrix-vector product

The most critical point in the implementation on a vector computer of iterative methods to solve sparse linear algebraic systems is the sparse matrix-vector product. Therefor we have compared its performance under three different sparse matrix storage schemes found in literature. These schemes have been tested on a FPS M64/330 using matrices similar to those arising in finite element or finite difference discretizations.

The results are reported and discussed. On the basis of them a new storage scheme is proposed and tested in similar situations. The obtained performance is never worse and often much better than those of the other schemes we have analyzed.