Vassilis Kalantzis

Estimating the trace of the matrix inverse by interpolating from the diagonal of an approximate inverse

Abstract A number of applications require the computation of the trace of a matrix that is implicitly available through a function. A common example of a function is the inverse of a large, sparse matrix, which is the focus of this paper. When the evaluation of the function is expensive, the task is computationally challenging because the standard approach is based on a Monte Carlo method which converges slowly. We present a different approach that exploits the pattern correlation, if present, between the diagonal of the inverse of the matrix and the diagonal of some approximate inverse that can be computed inexpensively. We leverage various sampling and fitting techniques to fit the diagonal of the approximation to the diagonal of the inverse. Depending on the quality of the approximate inverse, our method may serve as a standalone kernel for providing a fast trace estimate with a small number of samples. Furthermore, the method can be used as a variance reduction method for Monte Carlo in some cases. This is decided dynamically by our algorithm. An extensive set of experiments with various technique combinations on several matrices from some real applications demonstrate the potential of our method.

Accelerating data uncertainty quantification by solving linear systems with multiple right-hand sides

The subject of this work is accelerating data uncertainty quantification. In particular, we are interested in expediting the stochastic estimation of the diagonal of the inverse covariance (precision) matrix that holds a wealth of information concerning the quality of data collections, especially when the matrices are symmetric positive definite and dense. Schemes built on direct methods incur a prohibitive cubic cost. Recently proposed iterative methods can remedy this but the overall cost is raised again as the convergence of stochastic estimators can be slow. The motivation behind our approach stems from the fact that the computational bottleneck in stochastic estimation is the application of the precision matrix on a set of appropriately selected vectors. The proposed method combines block conjugate gradient with a block-seed approach for multiple right-hand sides, taking advantage of the nature of the right-hand sides and the fact that the diagonal is not sought to high accuracy. Our method is applicable if the matrix is only known implicitly and also produces a matrix-free diagonal preconditioner that can be applied to further accelerate the method. Numerical experiments confirm that the approach is promising and helps contain the overall cost of diagonal estimation as the number of samples grows.

Domain decomposition approaches for accelerating contour integration eigenvalue solvers for symmetric eigenvalue problems

Summary This paper discusses techniques for computing a few selected eigenvalue–eigenvector pairs of large and sparse symmetric matrices. A recently developed class of techniques to solve this type of problems is based on integrating the matrix resolvent operator along a complex contour that encloses the interval containing the eigenvalues of interest. This paper considers such contour integration techniques from a domain decomposition viewpoint and proposes two schemes. The first scheme can be seen as an extension of domain decomposition linear system solvers in the framework of contour integration methods for eigenvalue problems, such as FEAST. The second scheme focuses on integrating the resolvent operator primarily along the interface region defined by adjacent subdomains. A parallel implementation of the proposed schemes is described, and results on distributed computing environments are reported. These results show that domain decomposition approaches can lead to reduced run times and improved scalability.

Factored Proximity Models for Top-N Recommendations

In this paper, we propose EIGENREC; a simple and versatile Latent Factor framework for Top-N Recommendations, which includes the well-known PureSVD algorithm as a special case. EIGENREC builds a low dimensional model of an inter-item proximity matrix that combines a traditional similarity component, with a scaling operator, designed to regulate the effects of the prior item popularity on the final recommendation list. A comprehensive set of experiments on the MovieLens and the Yahoo datasets, based on widely applied performance metrics suggest that EIGENREC outperforms several state of-the-art algorithms, in terms of Standard and Long-Tail recommendation accuracy, while exhibiting low susceptibility to the problems caused by Sparsity, even its most extreme manifestations – the Cold-start problems.

Cucheb: A GPU implementation of the filtered Lanczos procedure

Abstract This paper describes the software package Cucheb, a GPU implementation of the filtered Lanczos procedure for the solution of large sparse symmetric eigenvalue problems. The filtered Lanczos procedure uses a carefully chosen polynomial spectral transformation to accelerate convergence of the Lanczos method when computing eigenvalues within a desired interval. This method has proven particularly effective for eigenvalue problems that arise in electronic structure calculations and density functional theory. We compare our implementation against an equivalent CPU implementation and show that using the GPU can reduce the computation time by more than a factor of 10. Program Summary Program title: Cucheb Program Files doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/rjr9tzchmh.1 Licensing provisions: MIT Programming language: CUDA C/C++ Nature of problem: Electronic structure calculations require the computation of all eigenvalue–eigenvector pairs of a symmetric matrix that lie inside a user-defined real interval. Solution method: To compute all the eigenvalues within a given interval a polynomial spectral transformation is constructed that maps the desired eigenvalues of the original matrix to the exterior of the spectrum of the transformed matrix. The Lanczos method is then used to compute the desired eigenvectors of the transformed matrix, which are then used to recover the desired eigenvalues of the original matrix. The bulk of the operations are executed in parallel using a graphics processing unit (GPU). Runtime: Variable, depending on the number of eigenvalues sought and the size and sparsity of the matrix. Additional comments: Cucheb is compatible with CUDA Toolkit v7.0 or greater.

A scalable iterative dense linear system solver for multiple right-hand sides in data analytics

Abstract We describe Parallel-Projection Block Conjugate Gradient ( pp-bcg ), a distributed iterative solver for the solution of dense and symmetric positive definite linear systems with multiple right-hand sides. In particular, we focus on linear systems appearing in the context of stochastic estimation of the diagonal of the matrix inverse in Uncertainty Quantification. pp-bcg is based on the block Conjugate Gradient algorithm combined with Galerkin projections to accelerate the convergence rate of the solution process of the linear systems. Numerical experiments on massively parallel architectures illustrate the performance of the proposed scheme in terms of efficiency and convergence rate, as well as its effectiveness relative to the (block) Conjugate Gradient and the Cholesky-based ScaLAPACK solver. In particular, on a 4 rack BG/Q with up to 65,536 processor cores using dense matrices of order as high as 524,288 and 800 right-hand sides, pp-bcg can be 2x-3x faster than the aforementioned techniques.

Beyond Automated Multilevel Substructuring: Domain Decomposition with Rational Filtering

This paper proposes a rational filtering domain decomposition technique for the solution of large and sparse symmetric generalized eigenvalue problems. The proposed technique is purely algebraic and decomposes the eigenvalue problem associated with each subdomain into two disjoint subproblems. The first subproblem is associated with the interface variables and accounts for the interaction among neighboring subdomains. To compute the solution of the original eigenvalue problem at the interface variables we leverage ideas from contour integral eigenvalue solvers. The second subproblem is associated with the interior variables in each subdomain and can be solved in parallel among the different subdomains using real arithmetic only. Compared to rational filtering projection methods applied to the original matrix pencil, the proposed technique integrates only a part of the matrix resolvent while it applies any orthogonalization necessary to vectors whose length is equal to the number of interface variables. In...

EigenRec: generalizing PureSVD for effective and efficient top-N recommendations

Sparsity presents one of the major challenges of Collaborative Filtering. Graph-based methods are known to alleviate its effects, however their use is often computationally prohibitive; Latent-Factor methods, on the other hand, present a reasonable and viable alternative. In this paper, we introduce EigenRec; a versatile and efficient Latent-Factor framework for Top-N Recommendations, that generalizes the well-known PureSVD algorithm (a) providing intuition about its inner structure, (b) paving the path towards improving its efficacy and, at the same time, (c) reducing its complexity. One of our central goals in this work is to ensure the applicability of our method in realistic big-data scenarios. To this end, we propose building our model using a computationally efficient Lanczos-based procedure, we discuss its Parallel Implementation in distributed computing environments, and we verify its favourable performance using real-world datasets. Furthermore, from a qualitative point of view, a comprehensive set of experiments on the MovieLens and the Yahoo!R2Music datasets based on widely applied performance metrics, indicate that EigenRec outperforms several state-of-the-art algorithms, in terms of Standard and Long-Tail recommendation accuracy, exhibiting low susceptibility to sparsity, even in its most extreme manifestations -- the Cold-Start problems.We introduce EigenRec, a versatile and efficient latent factor framework for top-N recommendations that includes the well-known PureSVD algorithm as a special case. EigenRec builds a low-dimensional model of an inter-item proximity matrix that combines a similarity component, with a scaling operator, designed to control the influence of the prior item popularity on the final model. Seeing PureSVD within our framework provides intuition about its inner workings, exposes its inherent limitations, and also, paves the path toward painlessly improving its recommendation performance. A comprehensive set of experiments on the MovieLens and the Yahoo datasets based on widely applied performance metrics, indicate that EigenRec outperforms several state-of-the-art algorithms, in terms of Standard and Long-Tail recommendation accuracy, exhibiting low susceptibility to sparsity, even in its most extreme manifestations—the Cold-Start problems. At the same time, EigenRec has an attractive computational profile and it can apply readily in large-scale recommendation settings.