Application of the Cramer rule in the solution of sparse systems of linear algebraic equations

Abstract

In this work, the solution of a sparse system of linear algebraic equations is obtained by using the Cramer rule. The determinants are computed with the help of the numerical structure approach defined in Suchkov (Graphs of Gearing Machines, Leningrad, Quebec, 1983) in which only the non-zero elements are used. Cramer rule produces the solution directly without creating fill-in problem encountered in other direct methods. Moreover, the solution can be expressed exactly if all the entries, including the right-hand side, are integers and if all products do not exceed the size of the largest integer that can be represented in the arithmetic of the computer used. The usefulness of Suchkov numerical structure approach is shown by applying on seven examples. Obtained results are also compared with digraph approach described in Mittal and Kurdi (J. Comput. Math., to appear). It is shown that the performance of the numerical structure approach is better than that of digraph approach.