A deep learning algorithm to accelerate algebraic multigrid methods in finite element solvers of 3D elliptic PDEs

Algebraic multigrid (AMG) methods are among the most efficient solvers for linear systems of equations and they are widely used for the solution of problems stemming from the discretization of Partial Differential Equations (PDEs). A severe limitation of AMG methods is the dependence on parameters that require to be fine-tuned. In particular, the strong threshold parameter is the most relevant since it stands at the basis of the construction of successively coarser grids needed by the AMG methods. We introduce a novel deep learning algorithm that minimizes the computational cost of the AMG method when used as a finite element solver. We show that our algorithm requires minimal changes to any existing code. The proposed Artificial Neural Network (ANN) tunes the value of the strong threshold parameter by interpreting the sparse matrix of the linear system as a gray scale image and exploiting a pooling operator to transform it into a small multi-channel image. We experimentally prove that the pooling successfully reduces the computational cost of processing a large sparse matrix and preserves the features needed for the regression task at hand. We train the proposed algorithm on a large dataset containing problems with a strongly heterogeneous diffusion coefficient defined in different three-dimensional geometries and discretized with unstructured grids and linear elasticity problems with a strongly heterogeneous Young's modulus. When tested on problems with coefficients or geometries not present in the training dataset, our approach reduces the computational time by up to 30%.