An explicit substructuring method for overlapping domain decomposition based on stochastic calculus

Abstract

In a recent paper [7], a hybrid supercomputing algorithm for elliptic equations has been proposed. The idea is that the interfacial nodal solutions solve a linear system, whose coefficients are expectations of functionals of stochastic differential equations confined within patches of about subdomain size. Compared to standard substructuring techniques, such as the Schur complement method for the skeleton, the hybrid approach produces an explicit and sparse shrunken matrix—hence suitable for substructuring again. The ultimate goal is to push strong scalability beyond the state of the art by leveraging the potential for parallelisation of stochastic calculus. Here, we present a major revamping of that framework, based on the insight of embedding the domain in a cover of overlapping circles (in two dimensions). This allows for efficient Fourier interpolation along the interfaces (now circumferences) and—crucially—for the evaluation of most of the interfacial system entries as the solution of small boundary value problems on a circle. This is both extremely efficient (as they can be solved in parallel and by the pseudospectral method) and free of Monte Carlo error. Stochastic numerics are only needed on the relatively few circles intersecting the domain boundary. In sum, the new formulation is significantly faster, simpler, and more accurate while retaining all of the advantageous properties of PDDSparse. Numerical experiments are included for the purpose of illustration.