Tsnnls
From JasonCantarellaWebpage
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TSNNLS: Fast Sparse Nonnegative Least Squares Solver
by Jason Cantarella, Michael Piatek, and Eric Rawdon.
Overview
tsnnls is a fast solver for least-squares problems in the form Ax = b under the constraint that all entries in the solution vector x are non-negative. tsnnls is written in portable ANSI C, and designed to be linked easily into larger applications. The quality of solutions is comparable to those of MATLAB, but tsnnls is much faster and does not require the overhead of an interface with a large commercial math package. The tsnnls solver is based on the standard LAPACK and BLAS libraries, the supernodal multifrontal sparse Cholesky code from TAUCS, and the Stanford LSQR least-squares solver. Both TAUCS and LSQR are built into the tsnnls distribution for simplicity. tsnnls uses the GNU autoconf process to detect and link with a local copy of LAPACK and BLAS. For simplicity, we have designed tsnnls to work with the limited LAPACK functionality provided by ATLAS. A full LAPACK enables better self-testing of tsnnls.
We have tested the build of tsnnls on a RedHat Linux and Mac OS X 10.4-10.6 systems. It should build without modification on most POSIX platforms with the gcc 3.x or 4.x toolchain. The tsnnls source is freely available under the GNU LGPL. Users should note that the included Stanford LSQR (license) and TAUCS (license) libraries are covered under different free-use licenses.
tsnnls is the computational core of our (forthcoming) RidgeRunner software for simulating the tightening of knotted strings and other self-contact problems in physics and graphics. Some preliminary animations of the RidgeRunner tightenings are posted on the web. Let us know how you use tsnnls in your applications!
We have recently upgraded tsnnls to version 2.2.3. The interface in the current version is backwards compatible with the original release of tsnnls. The internals of tsnnls are quite different-- we have replaced the original solver with a more robust design based on the block3 algorithm of Adlers. (See Adlers' thesis Sparse Least Squares Problems with Box Constraints for a complete description of the algorithm.) The new release also includes a win32 version of the code, courtesy of Tom Finnigan of tsplines, inc.
Download
Brave souls can always get the latest version of the source from the public subversion repository at http://www.jasoncantarella.com/tsnnls/. Otherwise, help yourself to one of the point releases below.
- tsnnls README
- tsnnls 2.3.3 distribution a few minor bug fixes, now compiles and checks correctly even if argtable2 is not present.
- tsnnls 2.2.3 distribution first release under LGPL, includes win32 support
- tsnnls 2.01.2. distribution fixes rarely seen bugs in 2.0.2
- tsnnls 2.0.2. distribution
- tsnnls 1.0.1 distribution includes the same data, but is upgraded with minor bug patches and GNU Autotools installation.
- tsnnls 1.0 distribution (4.7 megs) with Stanford SOL LSQR, limited TAUCS, and generic LAPACK/BLAS included (MD5: a20dca4923aa5bed73c8fac0f58cb637)
We have not published a paper on tsnnls, but we did publish the following preprint describing Tsnnls on arXiv. This is the best academic citation for work involving Tsnnls:
Contact
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Jason Cantarella
Associate Professor University of Georgia Mathematics Department Boyd Graduate Research Tower Athens, GA 30605 Email: last name AT math DOT uga DOT edu |
Michael Piatek
Graduate Student University of Washington Computer Science Department Box 352350 Seattle, WA 98185 |
Eric Rawdon
Associate Professor St. Thomas University Mathematics and Computer Science Department 2115 Summit Ave. St. Paul, MN 55105 |
Funding
We were supported by the NSF during the development of tsnnls. This work was funded by the the University of Georgia VIGRE grant DMS-00-8992 and DMS-02-04826 (to Cantarella and Fu). Piatek was supported through DMS-0311010 to Eric Rawdon. We also received support from DMS-0810415