A time—memory trade-off frontwidth reduction algorithm for finite element analysis

A frontwidth reduction algorithm is presented with an execution time which may be traded against its primary memory requirement, making it possible to optimize the performance of the algorithm on a particular computer. With an amount of primary memory O(E^1/2), where E is the number of elements, the execution time of the algorithm is O(E^3/2), in two or three dimensions. The algorithm has two parts: first, new node-based data structures are derived from the conventional element list, then these structures are used to reorder the elements for reduced frontwidth.