Parallel block-diagonal-bordered sparse linear solvers for electrical power system applications

Research is on-going that examines parallel direct block-diagonal-bordered sparse linear solvers for irregular sparse matrix problems derived from electrical power system applications. Parallel block-diagonal-bordered sparse linear solvers exhibit distinct advantages when compared to current general parallel direct sparse matrix solvers. Our research shows that actual power system matrices can be readily ordered into block-diagonal-bordered form, although load imbalance becomes excessive beyond 16 processors, limiting scalability for a single parallel linear solver within an application. Nevertheless, other dimensions exist in electrical power system applications that can be exploited to efficiently make use of large-scale multi-processors