Conceptual interfaces in hypre

The hypre software library is being developed with the aim of providing scalable solvers for the solution of large, sparse linear systems on massively parallel computers. To this end, the notion of conceptual interfaces was introduced. These interfaces give applications users a more natural means for describing their linear systems, and provide access to methods such as geometric multigrid which require additional information beyond just the matrix. This paper discusses the design of the conceptual interfaces in hypre and illustrates their use with various examples. A brief overview of the solvers and preconditioners available through these interfaces is also given.