Parallel Algorithm of Conjugate Gradient Solver using OpenGL Compute Shader

Abstract

OpenGL compute shader is a shader stage that operate differently from other shader stage and it can be used for the calculating purpose of any data in parallel. This paper proposes a GPU-based parallel algorithm for computing sparse linear systems through conjugate gradient using an iterative method, which perform calculation on OpenGL compute shader. Basically, this sparse linear solver is used to solve large linear systems such as symmetric positive definite matrix. Four well-known matrix formats (Dense, COO, ELL and CSR) have been used for matrix storage. The performance comparison from our experimental tests using eight sparse matrices shows that GPU-based linear solving system much faster than CPU-based linear solving system with the best average computing time 0.64ms in GPU-based and 15.37ms in CPU-based.