Complexity of Parallel Implementation of Domain Decomposition Techniques for Elliptic Partial Differential Equations

We discuss the parallel implementation of preconditioned conjugate gradient (PCG)-based domain decomposition techniques for self-adjoint elliptic partial differential equations in two dimensions on several architectures. The complexity of these methods is described on a variety of message-passing parallel computers as a function of the size of the problem, number of processors and relative communication speeds of the processors. We show that communication startups are very important, and that even the small amount of global communication in these methods can significantly reduce the performance of many message-passing computer architectures.