Shifting the Sweet Spot: High-Performance Matrix-Free Method for High-Order Elasticity

Fuente: arXiv
Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Chang, Dali, Zhang, Chong, Zhang, Kaiqi, Yang, Mingguan, Li, Huiyuan, Kong, Weiqiang
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
Materias:
Acceso en línea:
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866911371618156544
author Chang, Dali
Zhang, Chong
Zhang, Kaiqi
Yang, Mingguan
Li, Huiyuan
Kong, Weiqiang
author_facet Chang, Dali
Zhang, Chong
Zhang, Kaiqi
Yang, Mingguan
Li, Huiyuan
Kong, Weiqiang
contents In high-order finite element analysis for elasticity, matrix-free (PA) methods are a key technology for overcoming the memory bottleneck of traditional Full Assembly (FA). However, existing implementations fail to fully exploit the special structure of modern CPU architectures and tensor-product elements, causing their performance "sweet spot" to anomalously remain at the low order of $p \approx 2$, which severely limits the potential of high-order methods. To address this challenge, we design and implement a highly optimized PA operator within the MFEM framework, deeply integrated with a Geometric Multigrid (GMG) preconditioner. Our multi-level optimization strategy includes replacing the original $O(p^6)$ generic algorithm with an efficient $O(p^4)$ one based on tensor factorization, exploiting Voigt symmetry to reduce redundant computations for the elasticity problem, and employing macro-kernel fusion to enhance data locality and break the memory bandwidth bottleneck. Extensive experiments on mainstream x86 and ARM architectures demonstrate that our method successfully shifts the performance "sweet spot" to the higher-order region of $p \ge 6$. Compared to the MFEM baseline, the optimized core operator (kernel) achieves speedups of 7x to 83x, which translates to a 3.6x to 16.8x end-to-end performance improvement in the complete solution process. This paper provides a validated and efficient practical path for conducting large-scale, high-order elasticity simulations on mainstream CPU hardware.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_08374
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Shifting the Sweet Spot: High-Performance Matrix-Free Method for High-Order Elasticity
Chang, Dali
Zhang, Chong
Zhang, Kaiqi
Yang, Mingguan
Li, Huiyuan
Kong, Weiqiang
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Performance
In high-order finite element analysis for elasticity, matrix-free (PA) methods are a key technology for overcoming the memory bottleneck of traditional Full Assembly (FA). However, existing implementations fail to fully exploit the special structure of modern CPU architectures and tensor-product elements, causing their performance "sweet spot" to anomalously remain at the low order of $p \approx 2$, which severely limits the potential of high-order methods. To address this challenge, we design and implement a highly optimized PA operator within the MFEM framework, deeply integrated with a Geometric Multigrid (GMG) preconditioner. Our multi-level optimization strategy includes replacing the original $O(p^6)$ generic algorithm with an efficient $O(p^4)$ one based on tensor factorization, exploiting Voigt symmetry to reduce redundant computations for the elasticity problem, and employing macro-kernel fusion to enhance data locality and break the memory bandwidth bottleneck. Extensive experiments on mainstream x86 and ARM architectures demonstrate that our method successfully shifts the performance "sweet spot" to the higher-order region of $p \ge 6$. Compared to the MFEM baseline, the optimized core operator (kernel) achieves speedups of 7x to 83x, which translates to a 3.6x to 16.8x end-to-end performance improvement in the complete solution process. This paper provides a validated and efficient practical path for conducting large-scale, high-order elasticity simulations on mainstream CPU hardware.
title Shifting the Sweet Spot: High-Performance Matrix-Free Method for High-Order Elasticity
topic Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Performance
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.08374