Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
TABLE 8.2
Storage Requirements (in Millions of Bytes) for a Single Matrix Associated 
with the TB Computation of a Gold Cluster with the Speciied Number 
of Atoms
Memory 
for Sparse 
Storage
Memory 
for Dense 
Storage
Ratio 
(Dense/
Sparse)
Number 
of Atoms
Matrix 
Dimension
Number of 
Non-Zeros
Density 
(%)
13
117
8,041
58.7
0.1
0.1
1.1
55
495
74,375
30.4
0.9
1.9
2.2
147
1,323
263,011
15.0
3.0
13.4
4.4
309
2,781
638,169
8.3
7.3
59.0
8.1
561
5,049
1,264,069
5.0
14.5
194.5
13.4
923
8,307
2,201,763
3.2
25.2
526.5
20.9
1,415
12,735
3,519,215
2.2
40.3
1,237.3
30.7
2,057
18,513
5,274,949
1.5
60.4
2,614.8
43.3
2,869
25,821
7,529,793
1.1
86.3
5,086.7
59.0
3,871
34,839
10,354,207
0.9
118.6
9,260.2
78.1
5,083
45,747
13,802,299
0.7
158.1
15,966.7
101.0
In.order.to.study.systems.containing.thousands.of.atoms,.sparse.matrix.storage.
techniques. may. be. employed.. The. idea. of. sparse. storage. is. to. store. only. matrix.
elements. that. are. non-zero.. For. matrices. with. many. zero. elements,. this. scheme.
can. be. quite. eficient.. However,. there. is. an. overhead. associated. with. the. point-
ers. needed. to. keep. track. of. the. indices. of. the. matrix. elements.. There. are. many.
schemes. for. sparse. matrix. storage.. One. popular. matrix. scheme. is. CSR. (com-
pressed.sparse.row)..In.this.scheme,.an.index.indicating.the.start.of.each.row.is.
kept.as.well.as.an.index.indicating.the.column.of.each.matrix.element..Thus,.the.
storage. requirement. is. proportional. to. the. matrix. dimension. plus. the. number. of.
non-zero.elements.in.the.matrix..For.a.nice.overview.of.sparse.matrix.storage.and.
related. techniques,. see. Davis. [100].. In. Table. 8.2,. the. sparse. storage,. including.
overhead,.for.a.series.of.gold.clusters.is.given..Note.that.by.the.time.the.cluster.
size. reaches. 5000. atoms,. the. sparse. storage. scheme. is. two. orders. of. magnitude.
more.eficient.than.the.dense.( n 2 ).storage.scheme..These.results.are.taken.from.our.
EHTB.code.that.uses.a.cutoff.distance.(12. a 0 .in.this.case).beyond.which.matrix.
elements.are.taken.to.be.zero.
There.are.some.drawbacks.to.using.sparse.matrix.techniques..Though.there.are.
a.number.of.libraries.available.that.implement.linear.algebra.operations.on.sparse.
matrices,. these. have. not. seen. widespread. adoption. for. reasons. that. are. not. clear..
Another.reason.for.the.lesser.popularity.of.sparse.matrix.schemes.is.the.relatively.
poor.performance.versus.optimized.math.libraries.such.as.the.BLAS..The.primary.
cause.of.the.poor.performance. is.poor.data.locality.and.irregular.data.access.pat-
terns..Nevertheless,.for.a.matrix.of.suficiently.large.dimension.(perhaps.a.few.thou-
sand),.the.performance.of.linear.algebra.operations.on.sparse.matrices.exceeds.that.
 
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