Portable, Extensible Toolkit for Scientific Computation

Last updated
PETSc
Stable release
3.20 / 28 September 2023;1 day ago (2023-09-28)
Repository
Operating system Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, Windows
Available inC, Python, Fortran
Type Scientific simulation software
License BSD 2-clause license
Website petsc.org

The Portable, Extensible Toolkit for Scientific Computation (PETSc, pronounced PET-see; the S is silent), is a suite of data structures and routines developed by Argonne National Laboratory for the scalable (parallel) solution of scientific applications modeled by partial differential equations. It employs the Message Passing Interface (MPI) standard for all message-passing communication. PETSc is the world’s most widely used parallel numerical software library for partial differential equations and sparse matrix computations. PETSc received an R&D 100 Award in 2009. [1] [2] [3] The PETSc Core Development Group won the SIAM/ACM Prize in Computational Science and Engineering for 2015. [4]

Contents

PETSc is intended for use in large-scale application projects, many ongoing computational science projects are built around the PETSc libraries. Its careful design allows advanced users to have detailed control over the solution process. PETSc includes a large suite of parallel linear and nonlinear equation solvers that are easily used in application codes written in C, C++, Fortran and now Python. PETSc provides many of the mechanisms needed within parallel application code, such as simple parallel matrix and vector assembly routines that allow the overlap of communication and computation. In addition, PETSc includes support for parallel distributed arrays useful for finite difference methods. [5]

Components

Components of the PETSc software package as of version 3.15 Library structure.svg
Components of the PETSc software package as of version 3.15

PETSc consists of a variety of components consisting of major classes and supporting infrastructure. Users typically interact with objects of the highest level classes relevant to their application, essential lower level objects such as vectors, and may customize or extend any others. All major components of PETSc have an extensible plugin architecture.

Features and modules

PETSc provides many features for parallel computation, broken into several modules:

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-03-12. Retrieved 2013-05-01.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. ↑ "PETSc Wins 2009 R&D 100 Award | Argonne Leadership Computing Facility". Alcf.anl.gov. 2009-07-21. Retrieved 2013-05-01.
  3. ↑ Thu, 07/30/2009 - 5:23am (2009-07-30). "PETSc Release 3.0 expands capabilities". Rdmag.com. Retrieved 2013-05-01.
  4. ↑ "SIAM/ACM Prize in Computational Science and Engineering". siam.org. 2015-03-18. Retrieved 2015-04-19.
  5. ↑ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-08-05. Retrieved 2013-05-01.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)

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