Performance-Based Numerical Solver Selection in the Lighthouse Framework

Scientific and engineering computing rely heavily on linear algebra for large-scale data analysis, modeling and simulation, machine learning, and other applied problems. Sparse linear system solution often dominates the execution time of such applications, prompting the ongoing development of highly optimized iterative algorithms and high-performance parallel implementations. In the Lighthouse project, we enable application developers with varied backgrounds to readily discover and effectively apply the best available numerical software for their problems, aiming to maximize both developer productivity and application performance. Lighthouse is a search-based expert system built on a software taxonomy that combines expert knowledge, machine learning– based classification of existing numerical software collections, and automated code generation and optimization. In this paper we present the integration of PETSc and Trilinos iterative solvers for sparse linear systems into the Lighthouse framework. In addition to functional information in the taxonomy, we have created a comprehensive machine learning–based workflow for the automated classification of sparse solvers, which can be generalized to other types of rapidly evolving numerical methods. We present a comparative analysis of the solver classification results for a varied set of input problems and machine learning methods, achieving up to 93% accuracy in identifying the best-performing linear solution methods in PETSc and Trilinos.