On the Performance of a Novel Class of Linear System Solvers and Comparison with State-of-The-Art Algorithms

We present a comprehensive computational study of a class of linear system solvers, called {\it Triangle Algorithm} (TA) and {\it Centering Triangle Algorithm} (CTA), developed by Kalantari \cite{kalantari23}. The algorithms compute an approximate solution or minimum-norm solution to $Ax=b$ or $A^TAx=A^Tb$, where $A$ is an $m \times n$ real matrix of arbitrary rank. The algorithms specialize when $A$ is symmetric positive semi-definite. Based on the description and theoretical properties of TA and CTA from \cite{kalantari23}, we give an implementation of the algorithms that is easy-to-use for practitioners, versatile for a wide range of problems, and robust in that our implementation does not necessitate any constraints on $A$. Next, we make computational comparisons of our implementation with the Matlab implementations of two state-of-the-art algorithms, GMRES and ``lsqminnorm". We consider square and rectangular matrices, for $m$ up to $10000$ and $n$ up to $1000000$, encompassing a variety of applications. These results indicate that our implementation outperforms GMRES and ``lsqminnorm" both in runtime and quality of residuals. Moreover, the relative residuals of CTA decrease considerably faster and more consistently than GMRES, and our implementation provides high precision approximation, faster than GMRES reports lack of convergence. With respect to ``lsqminnorm", our implementation runs faster, producing better solutions. Additionally, we present a theoretical study in the dynamics of iterations of residuals in CTA and complement it with revealing visualizations. Lastly, we extend TA for LP feasibility problems, handling non-negativity constraints. Computational results show that our implementation for this extension is on par with those of TA and CTA, suggesting applicability in linear programming and related problems.