> On Mar 10, 2016, at 12:03 PM, Justin Chang <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Hi again,
> 
> I was reading through the TAO manual and the impression I am getting is that 
> the KSP solver computes the gradient/projection, not necessarily the solution 
> itself. Meaning it matters not how accurate this projection is, so long as 
> the actual objective tolerance is met.

  Not sure what you mean by this.

  The KSP solver computes an "update" to the solution. So long as the update is 
"enough of" a descent direction then you will get convergence of the 
optimization problem. 

> 
> Is this a correct assessment of why one can get away with a less stringent 
> KSP tolerance and still attain an accurate solution?

  Of course knowing how accurate the KSP must be to insure the update is 
"enough of" a descent direction is impossible :-)

  Barry

> 
> Thanks,
> Justin
> 
> On Tuesday, March 8, 2016, Justin Chang <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> So I am solving a convex optimization problem of the following form:
> 
> min 1/2 x^T*H*x - x^T*f
> s.t. 0 < x < 1
> 
> Using the TAOTRON solver, I also have CG/ILU for KSP/PC. The following TAO 
> solver tolerances are used for my specific problem:
> 
> -tao_gatol 1e-12
> -tao_grtol 1e-7
> 
> I noticed that the KSP tolerance truly defines the performance of this 
> solver. Attached are three run cases with -ksp_rtol 1e-7, 1e-3, and 1e-1 with 
> "-ksp_converged_reason -ksp_monitor_true_residual -tao_view 
> -tao_converged_reason -log_view". It seems that the lower the KSP tolerance, 
> the faster the time-to-solution where the number of KSP/TAO solve iterations 
> remains roughly the same.
> 
> So my question is, is this "normal"? That is, if using TRON, one may relax 
> the KSP tolerances because the convergence of the solver is primarily due to 
> the objective functional from TRON and not necessarily the KSP solve itself? 
> Is there a general rule of thumb for this, because it would seem to me that 
> for any TRON solve I do, i could just set a really low KSP rtol and still get 
> roughly the same performance.
> 
> Thanks,
> Justin
> 

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