Parallel linear system solvers for Runge-Kutta methods

If the nonlinear systems arising in implicit Runge-Kutta methods like the Radau IIA methods are iterated by (modified) Newton, then we have to solve linear systems whose matrix of coefficients is of the form $I-A otimes hJ$ with A the Runge-Kutta matrix and J an approximation to the Jacobian of the righthand side function of the system of differential equations. For larger systems of differential equations, the solution of these linear systems by a direct linear solver is very costly, mainly because of the LU-decompositions. We try to reduce these costs by solving the linear systems by a second (inner) iteration process. This inner iteration process is such that each inner iteration again requires the solution of a linear system. However, the matrix of coefficients in these new linear systems is of the form $I-B otimes hJ$ where B is similar to a diagonal matrix with positive diagonal entries. Hence, after performing a similarity transformation, the linear systems are decoupled into s subsystems, so that the costs of the LU-decomposition are reduced to the costs of s LU-decompositions of dimension d. Since these LU-decompositions can be computed in parallel, the effective LU-costs on a parallel computer system are reduced by a factor $s^3$. It will be shown that matrices B can be constructed such that the inner iterations converge whenever A and J have their eigenvalues in the positive and nonpositive halfplane, respectively. The theoretical results will be illustrated by a few numerical examples. A parallel implementation on the four-processor Cray-C98/4256 shows a speed-up ranging from at least 2.4 until at least 3.1 with respect to RADAU5 applied in one-processor mode.