Developer(s) Timothy A. Davis Development status Active Operating system | Initial release January 1994 Written in C | |
Stable release 5.7.4 / February 1, 2016; 13 months ago (2016-02-01) | ||
UMFPACK /ˈʌmfpæk/ is a set of routines for solving unsymmetric sparse linear systems of the form Ax=b, using the Unsymmetric MultiFrontal method (Matrix A is not required to be symmetric). Written in ANSI/ISO C and interfaces with
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It appears as a built-in routine (for lu, backslash, and forward slash) in MATLAB, and includes a MATLAB interface, a C-callable interface, and a Fortran-callable interface. Note that "UMFPACK" is pronounced in two syllables, "Umph Pack". It is not "You Em Ef Pack".
The BLAS: Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms
UMFPACK has installation options to use the many versions of the BLAS, or no BLAS at all. The BLAS is what UMFPACK relies on to get high performance on a wide range of computers. If at all possible, use the BLAS. If your BLAS uses 64-bit integers, compile with -DBLAS64. You can also edit the UFconfig.h (SuiteSparse_config.h starting from version 4.0.0) file as needed to include this definition.
History
The license of UMFPACK has changed in the last two years from a BSD license to LGPL, and finally in the last version 5.2 to a GPL license. Some versions of the software have been retroactively placed under the LGPL, so different licensed versions can be found.