Fast Sparse Matrix Permutation for Mesh-Based Direct Solvers

Behrooz Zarebavami, Ahmed H. Mahmoud, Ana Dodik, Changcheng Yuan, Serban D. Porumbescu, John D. Owens, Maryam Mehri Dehnavi, Justin Solomon

Abstract: We present a fast sparse matrix permutation algorithm tailored to linear systems arising from triangle meshes. Our approach produces nested-dissection-style permutations while significantly reducing permutation runtime overhead. Rather than enforcing strict balance and separator optimality, the algorithm deliberately relaxes these design decisions to favor fast partitioning and efficient elimination-tree construction. Our method decomposes permutation into patch-level local orderings and a compact quotient-graph ordering of separators, preserving the essential structure required by sparse Cholesky factorization while avoiding its most expensive components. We integrate our algorithm into vendor-maintained sparse Cholesky solvers on both CPUs and GPUs. Across a range of graphics applications, including single factorizations, repeated factorizations, our method reduces permutation time and improves the sparse Cholesky solve performance by up to 6.27x.

External IDs:dblp:journals/corr/abs-2602-00898