PCPATCH: Software for the Topological Construction of Multigrid Relaxation Methods

Effective relaxation methods are necessary for good multigrid convergence. For many equations, standard Jacobi and Gauß-Seidel are inadequate, and more sophisticated space decompositions are required; examples include problems with semidefinite terms or saddle point structure. In this article, we present a unifying software abstraction, PCPATCH, for the topological construction of space decompositions for multigrid relaxation methods. Space decompositions are specified by collecting topological entities in a mesh (such as all vertices or faces) and applying a construction rule (such as taking all degrees of freedom in the cells around each entity). The software is implemented in PETSc and facilitates the elegant expression of a wide range of schemes merely by varying solver options at runtime. In turn, this allows for the very rapid development of fast solvers for difficult problems.