BCCB preconditioners for systems of BVM‐based numerical integrators

Boundary value methods (BVMs) for ordinary differential equations require the solution of non‐symmetric, large and sparse linear systems. In this paper, these systems are solved by using the generalized minimal residual (GMRES) method. A block‐circulant preconditioner with circulant blocks (BCCB preconditioner) is proposed to speed up the convergence rate of the GMRES method. The BCCB preconditioner is shown to be invertible when the BVM is A_k1,k2‐stable. The spectrum of the preconditioned matrix is clustered and therefore, the preconditioned GMRES method converges fast. Moreover, the operation cost in each iteration of the preconditioned GMRES method by using our BCCB preconditioner is less than that required by using block‐circulant preconditioners proposed earlier. In numerical experiments, we compare the number of iterations of various preconditioners. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.