Partial differential equations (PDEs) are crucial in modelling diverse phenomena across scientific disciplines, including seismic and medical imaging, computational fluid dynamics, image processing, and neural networks. Solving these PDEs on a large scale is an intricate and time-intensive process that demands careful tuning. This paper introduces automated code-generation techniques specifically tailored for distributed memory parallelism (DMP) to solve explicit finite-difference (FD) stencils at scale, a fundamental challenge in numerous scientific applications. These techniques are implemented and integrated into the Devito DSL and compiler framework, a well-established solution for automating the generation of FD solvers based on a high-level symbolic math input. Users benefit from modelling simulations at a high-level symbolic abstraction and effortlessly harnessing HPC-ready distributed-memory parallelism without altering their source code. This results in drastic reductions both in execution time and developer effort. While the contributions of this work are implemented and integrated within the Devito framework, the DMP concepts and the techniques applied are generally applicable to any FD solvers. A comprehensive performance evaluation of Devito's DMP via MPI demonstrates highly competitive weak and strong scaling on the Archer2 supercomputer, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed approach in meeting the demands of large-scale scientific simulations.
We provide a new theoretical framework for the variable-step deferred correction (DC) methods based on the well-known BDF2 formula. By using the discrete orthogonal convolution kernels, some high-order BDF2-DC methods are proven to be stable on arbitrary time grids according to the recent definition of stability (SINUM, 60: 2253-2272). It significantly relaxes the existing step-ratio restrictions for the BDF2-DC methods (BIT, 62: 1789-1822). The associated sharp error estimates are established by taking the numerical effects of the starting approximations into account, and they suggest that the BDF2-DC methods have no aftereffect, that is, the lower-order starting scheme for the BDF2 scheme will not cause a loss in the accuracy of the high-order BDF2-DC methods. Extensive tests on the graded and random time meshes are presented to support the new theory.
Differential geometric approaches to the analysis and processing of data in the form of symmetric positive definite (SPD) matrices have had notable successful applications to numerous fields including computer vision, medical imaging, and machine learning. The dominant geometric paradigm for such applications has consisted of a few Riemannian geometries associated with spectral computations that are costly at high scale and in high dimensions. We present a route to a scalable geometric framework for the analysis and processing of SPD-valued data based on the efficient computation of extreme generalized eigenvalues through the Hilbert and Thompson geometries of the semidefinite cone. We explore a particular geodesic space structure based on Thompson geometry in detail and establish several properties associated with this structure. Furthermore, we define a novel iterative mean of SPD matrices based on this geometry and prove its existence and uniqueness for a given finite collection of points. Finally, we state and prove a number of desirable properties that are satisfied by this mean.
Deep learning solvers for partial differential equations typically have limited accuracy. We propose to overcome this problem by using them as preconditioners. More specifically, we apply discretization-invariant neural operators to learn preconditioners for the flexible conjugate gradient method (FCG). Architecture paired with novel loss function and training scheme allows for learning efficient preconditioners that can be used across different resolutions. On the theoretical side, FCG theory allows us to safely use nonlinear preconditioners that can be applied in $O(N)$ operations without constraining the form of the preconditioners matrix. To justify learning scheme components (the loss function and the way training data is collected) we perform several ablation studies. Numerical results indicate that our approach favorably compares with classical preconditioners and allows to reuse of preconditioners learned for lower resolution to the higher resolution data.
We propose a new loss function for supervised and physics-informed training of neural networks and operators that incorporates a posteriori error estimate. More specifically, during the training stage, the neural network learns additional physical fields that lead to rigorous error majorants after a computationally cheap postprocessing stage. Theoretical results are based upon the theory of functional a posteriori error estimates, which allows for the systematic construction of such loss functions for a diverse class of practically relevant partial differential equations. From the numerical side, we demonstrate on a series of elliptic problems that for a variety of architectures and approaches (physics-informed neural networks, physics-informed neural operators, neural operators, and classical architectures in the regression and physics-informed settings), we can reach better or comparable accuracy and in addition to that cheaply recover high-quality upper bounds on the error after training.
We propose a generalization of nonlinear stability of numerical one-step integrators to Riemannian manifolds in the spirit of Butcher's notion of B-stability. Taking inspiration from Simpson-Porco and Bullo, we introduce non-expansive systems on such manifolds and define B-stability of integrators. In this first exposition, we provide concrete results for a geodesic version of the Implicit Euler (GIE) scheme. We prove that the GIE method is B-stable on Riemannian manifolds with non-positive sectional curvature. We show through numerical examples that the GIE method is expansive when applied to a certain non-expansive vector field on the 2-sphere, and that the GIE method does not necessarily possess a unique solution for large enough step sizes. Finally, we derive a new improved global error estimate for general Lie group integrators.
Bayesian networks are widely utilised in various fields, offering elegant representations of factorisations and causal relationships. We use surjective functions to reduce the dimensionality of the Bayesian networks by combining states and study the preservation of their factorisation structure. We introduce and define corresponding notions, analyse their properties, and provide examples of highly symmetric special cases, enhancing the understanding of the fundamental properties of such reductions for Bayesian networks. We also discuss the connection between this and reductions of homogeneous and non-homogeneous Markov chains.
We formulate a uniform tail bound for empirical processes indexed by a class of functions, in terms of the individual deviations of the functions rather than the worst-case deviation in the considered class. The tail bound is established by introducing an initial "deflation" step to the standard generic chaining argument. The resulting tail bound is the sum of the complexity of the "deflated function class" in terms of a generalization of Talagrand's $\gamma$ functional, and the deviation of the function instance, both of which are formulated based on the natural seminorm induced by the corresponding Cram\'{e}r functions. We also provide certain approximations for the mentioned seminorm when the function class lies in a given (exponential type) Orlicz space, that can be used to make the complexity term and the deviation term more explicit.
We present MIPS, a novel method for program synthesis based on automated mechanistic interpretability of neural networks trained to perform the desired task, auto-distilling the learned algorithm into Python code. We test MIPS on a benchmark of 62 algorithmic tasks that can be learned by an RNN and find it highly complementary to GPT-4: MIPS solves 32 of them, including 13 that are not solved by GPT-4 (which also solves 30). MIPS uses an integer autoencoder to convert the RNN into a finite state machine, then applies Boolean or integer symbolic regression to capture the learned algorithm. As opposed to large language models, this program synthesis technique makes no use of (and is therefore not limited by) human training data such as algorithms and code from GitHub. We discuss opportunities and challenges for scaling up this approach to make machine-learned models more interpretable and trustworthy.
We consider nonparametric Bayesian inference in a multidimensional diffusion model with reflecting boundary conditions based on discrete high-frequency observations. We prove a general posterior contraction rate theorem in $L^2$-loss, which is applied to Gaussian priors. The resulting posteriors, as well as their posterior means, are shown to converge to the ground truth at the minimax optimal rate over H\"older smoothness classes in any dimension. Of independent interest and as part of our proofs, we show that certain frequentist penalized least squares estimators are also minimax optimal.
Researchers would often like to leverage data from a collection of sources (e.g., primary studies in a meta-analysis) to estimate causal effects in a target population of interest. However, traditional meta-analytic methods do not produce causally interpretable estimates for a well-defined target population. In this paper, we present the CausalMetaR R package, which implements efficient and robust methods to estimate causal effects in a given internal or external target population using multi-source data. The package includes estimators of average and subgroup treatment effects for the entire target population. To produce efficient and robust estimates of causal effects, the package implements doubly robust and non-parametric efficient estimators and supports using flexible data-adaptive (e.g., machine learning techniques) methods and cross-fitting techniques to estimate the nuisance models (e.g., the treatment model, the outcome model). We describe the key features of the package and demonstrate how to use the package through an example.