Applications of Algebraic Multigrid to Large-Scale Finite Element Analysis of Whole Bone Micro-Mechanics on the IBM SP

Accurate micro-finite element analyses of whole bones require the solution of large sets of algebraic equations. Multigrid has proven to be an effective approach to the design of highly scalable linear solvers for solid mechanics problems. We present some of the first applications of scalable linear solvers, on massively parallel computers, to whole vertebral body structural analysis. We analyze the performance of our algebraic multigrid (AMG) methods on problems with over 237 million degrees of freedom on IBM SP parallel computers. We demonstrate excellent parallel scalability, both in the algorithms and the implementations, and analyze the nodal performance of the important AMG kernels on the IBM Power3 and Power4 architectures.