Thanks, that is great. I was wondering about the symmetry checker - we have the 
naive one currently, but I can just use the CHOLMOD one now. 

-viral



> On 06-Jan-2015, at 2:22 am, Tim Davis <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> oops.  Yes, your factorize function is broken.  You might try mine instead, 
> in my
> factorize package.
> 
> I have a symmetry-checker in CHOLMOD.  It checks if the matrix is symmetric 
> and
> with positive diagonals.  I think I have a MATLAB interface for it too.  The 
> code is efficient,
> since it doesn't form A transpose, and it quits early as soon as asymmetry is 
> detected.
> 
> It does rely on the fact that MATLAB requires its sparse matrices to have 
> sorted row indices
> in each column, however.
> 
> On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 2:43 PM, Viral Shah <[email protected]> wrote:
> Tim - thanks for the reference. The paper will come in handy. This is a 
> longstanding issue, that we just haven’t got around to addressing yet, but 
> perhaps now is a good time.
> 
> https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/3295
> 
> We have a very simplistic factorize() for sparse matrices that must have been 
> implemented as a stopgap. This is what it currently does and that explains 
> everything.
> 
> # placing factorize here for now. Maybe add a new file
> function factorize(A::SparseMatrixCSC)
>     m, n = size(A)
>     if m == n
>         Ac = cholfact(A)
>         Ac.c.minor == m && ishermitian(A) && return Ac
>     end
>     return lufact(A)
> end
> 
> -viral
> 
> 
> 
> > On 06-Jan-2015, at 1:57 am, Tim Davis <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > That does sound like a glitch in the "\" algorithm, rather than in UMFPACK. 
> >  The OpenBLAS is pretty good.
> >
> > This is very nice in Julia:
> >
> > F = lufact (d["M"]) ; F \ d
> >
> > That's a great idea to have a factorization object like that.  I have a 
> > MATLAB toolbox that does
> > the same thing, but it's not a built-in function inside MATLAB.  It's 
> > written in M, so it can be slow for
> > small matrices.   With it, however, I can do:
> >
> > F = factorize (A) ;    % does an LU, Cholesky, QR, SVD, or whatever.  Uses 
> > my polyalgorithm for "\".
> > x = F\b ;
> >
> > I can do S = inverse(A); which returns a factorization, not an inverse, but 
> > with a flag
> > set so that S*b does A\b (and yes, S\b would do A*b, since S keeps a copy 
> > of A inside it, as well).
> >
> > You can also specify the factorization, such as
> >
> >  F=factorize(A, 'lu')
> > F=factorize(A,'svd') ; etc.
> >
> > It's in SuiteSparse/MATLAB_tools/Factorize, if you're interested.  I've 
> > suggested the same
> > feature to The MathWorks.
> >
> > My factorize function includes a backslash polyalgorithm, if you're 
> > interested in taking a look.
> >
> > Algorithm 930: FACTORIZE: an object-oriented linear system solver for 
> > MATLAB T. A. Davis, ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, Vol 39, 
> > Issue 4, pp. 28:1 - 28:18, 2013.
> > http://faculty.cse.tamu.edu/davis/publications_files/Factorize_an_object_oriented_linear_system_solver_for_MATLAB.pdf
> >
> > On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 2:11 PM, Viral Shah <[email protected]> wrote:
> > The BLAS will certainly make a difference, but OpenBLAS is reasonably good.
> >
> > I also wonder what is happening in our \ polyalgorithm. The profile 
> > suggests the code is trying Cholesky decomposition, but it really shouldn't 
> > since the matrix is not symmetric. If I just do the lufact(), which 
> > essentially calls Umfpack, I can match Matlab timing:
> >
> > @time F = lufact(d["M"]); F \ d["RHS"];
> >
> > -viral
> >
> >
> > On Tuesday, January 6, 2015 12:31:34 AM UTC+5:30, Tim Davis wrote:
> > The difference could be the BLAS.  MATLAB comes with its own BLAS library, 
> > and the performance
> > of the BLAS has a huge impact on the performance of UMFPACK, particularly 
> > for 3D discretizations.
> >
> > On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 6:21 AM, Ehsan Eftekhari <[email protected]> 
> > wrote:
> > I'm solving diffusion equation in Matlab on a 3D uniform grid (31x32x33) 
> > and Julia. I use the "\" to solve the linear system of equations. Here is 
> > the performance of the linear solver in Julia:
> > elapsed time: 2.743971424 seconds (35236720 bytes allocated)
> >
> > and Matlab (I used spparms('spumoni',1) to see what "\" does in Matlab):
> > sp\: bandwidth = 1056+1+1056.
> > sp\: is A diagonal? no.
> > sp\: is band density (0.00) > bandden (0.50) to try banded solver? no.
> > sp\: is A triangular? no.
> > sp\: is A morally triangular? no.
> > sp\: is A a candidate for Cholesky (symmetric, real positive diagonal)? no.
> > sp\: use Unsymmetric MultiFrontal PACKage with automatic reordering.
> > sp\: UMFPACK's factorization was successful.
> > sp\: UMFPACK's solve was successful.
> > Elapsed time is 0.819120 seconds.
> >
> > I have uploaded the sparse matrix (M) and the right-hand side (RHS) vectors 
> > in a mat file here:
> > https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8OOfC6oWXEPV2xYTWFMZTljU00&authuser=0
> >
> > I read in the documents that Julia uses Umfpack for sparse matrices. My 
> > question is why umfpack is faster when it is called from matlab?
> >
> > The matlab and julia codes are here:
> > https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8OOfC6oWXEPbXFnYlh2TFBKV1k&authuser=0
> > https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8OOfC6oWXEPdlNfOEFKbnV5MlE&authuser=0
> >
> > and the FVM codes are here:
> > https://github.com/simulkade/FVTool
> > https://github.com/simulkade/JFVM
> >
> > Thanks a lot in advance,
> >
> > Ehsan
> >
> >
> > On Wednesday, June 5, 2013 8:39:15 AM UTC+2, Viral Shah wrote:
> > I guess it is the last 20 years of sparse solver work packed into one 
> > function. Not many fields can boast of providing this level of usability 
> > out of their work. :-)
> >
> > There are a class of people who believe that things like \ encourage 
> > blackbox usage, with people doing stuff they do not understand, and there 
> > are others who believe in standing on the shoulders of giants.
> >
> > I find that we have taken a good approach in Julia, where we have \ and it 
> > will have the perfect polyalgorithm at some point. But, you also have the 
> > option of digging deeper with interfaces such as lufact(), cholfact(), 
> > qrfact(), and finally, even if that does not work out for you, call the 
> > LAPACK and SuiteSparse functions directly.
> >
> > -viral
> >
> > On Wednesday, June 5, 2013 9:42:12 AM UTC+5:30, Stefan Karpinski wrote:
> > Goodness. This is why there needs to be a polyalgorithm – no mortal user 
> > could know all of this stuff!
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 11:11 PM, Viral Shah <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Doug,
> >
> > Ideally, the backslash needs to look for diagonal matrices, triangular 
> > matrices and permutations thereof, banded matrices and the least squares 
> > problems (non-square). In case it is square, symmetric and hermitian, with 
> > a heavy diagonal(?), cholesky can be attempted, with a fallback to LU. I 
> > believe we do some of this in the dense \ polyalgorithm, but I am not sure 
> > if we look for the banded cases yet.
> >
> > This is what Octave does:
> > http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Sparse-Linear-Algebra.html#Sparse-Linear-Algebra
> >
> > This is Tim's Factorize for solving linear and least squares systems:
> > http://www.cise.ufl.edu/research/sparse/SuiteSparse/current/SuiteSparse/MATLAB_Tools/Factorize/Doc/factorize_demo.html
> >
> > -viral
> >
> >
> > On Tuesday, June 4, 2013 8:18:39 PM UTC+5:30, Douglas Bates wrote:
> > On Thursday, May 30, 2013 10:10:59 PM UTC-5, Mingming Wang wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I am trying to port my MATLAB program to Julia. The for loop is about 25% 
> > faster. But the backslash is about 10 times slower. It seems in MATLAB, the 
> > backslash is parallelized automatically. Is there any plan in Julia to do 
> > this? BTW, the matrix I am solving is sparse and symmetric.
> >
> > For a sparse symmetric matrix try
> >
> > cholfact(A)\b
> >
> > The simple
> >
> > A\b
> >
> > call will always use an LU decomposition from UMFPACK.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> 
> 

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