A number of significant problems require the solution of a system of linear equations Ax = b in which A is large, highly sparse, nonsymmetric, and unstructured. Several iterative methods which are applicable to nonsymmetric and indefinite problems are applied to a suite of test problems derived from simulations of actual bipolar circuits and to a viscous flow problem.

Methods tested include Craig’s method, GMRES(k), BiCGSTAB, QMR, KACZ (a row-projection method) and LSQR. The convergence rates of these methods may be improved by use of a suitable preconditioner. Several such techniques are considered, including incomplete LU factorization (ILU), sparse submatrix ILU, and ILU allowing restricted fill in bands or blocks. Timings and convergence statistics are given for each iterative method and preconditioner.