topic Does the Intel MKL CSR format imply a restriction on the spars in Intel® oneAPI Math Kernel Library

Does the Intel MKL CSR format imply a restriction on the sparse matrix?

euclid0413 — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 13:13:27 GMT

Is it true that Intel MKL compressed sparse row (CSR)format requires that each and every row of the sparse matrix should have at least one none-zero element?

In page 2756 of the Intel MKL Reference Manual(2007), it is said that CSR format for sparse matrix A consists of four arrays,which are called the values, columns, pointerB, and pointerE arrays, and that the length of pointerB array is equal to the number of rows in A. Besides, element j of pointerB array gives the index into the values array that contains the first non-zero element in a row j of A.So we can deduce that every row of A must have at least one non-zero element.

The problem is, what would happen if some rows of A consist of all zeros?

Does the Intel MKL CSR format imply a restriction on the spars

Gennady_F_Intel — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 17:08:06 GMT

it should works w/o problem, if I am not mistaken we should change the documentation.

Does the Intel MKL CSR format imply a restriction on the spars

euclid0413 — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 03:59:19 GMT

Yes, the missing information in the documentation can be really misleading and result in some bugs in appplications.