Parallel solution of symmetric banded systems on transputers

An efficient parallel solution is presented of a banded system of linear equations on a network of transputers using the Gaussian elimination method. The parallel implementation is based on a row-scattered decomposition of the equation matrices which are assumed to be symmetric and positive definite. In order to achieve an optimal efficiency, the implementation takes advantage of the transputer's ability to overlap communication work with computation. Various communication strategies and network topologies are examined, and relevant experimental results and performance figures are presented and discussed.<>