AGIPC: Adaptive In-Solve Algebraic Coarsening for GPU IPC

TL;DR

This paper introduces a GPU-oriented algebraic adaptive in-solve coarsening method for implicit time integration, reducing computational cost without topological changes, achieving up to 3x speedup.

Contribution

It presents a novel algebraic coarsening technique that dynamically reduces degrees of freedom during Newton solves on GPUs without explicit remeshing.

Findings

Up to 3x speedup over existing GPU IPC solvers.

Produces visually indistinguishable results from traditional methods.

Seamless integration with IPC's barrier energy and GPU parallelism.

Abstract

Implicit time integration is key to robustly simulating stiff materials and large deformations, but its performance is often dominated by repeatedly solving large linear systems. Adaptive coarsening can reduce this cost by concentrating degrees of freedom (DoF) to where it is most needed, yet conventional explicit remeshing changes connectivity (and often vertex ordering), complicating parallel implementations, harming memory locality, and sometimes being disallowed when it may introduce local geometry intersections. Adaptive subspace approaches avoid topological changes, but basis construction and updates incur irregular data access patterns and typically produce dense system matrices, limiting GPU efficiency and keeping many practical systems CPU-centric. We present algebraic adaptive in-solve coarsening, a GPU-oriented method that dynamically reduces DoF within the Newton solve of implicit time integration without explicit topological modification. Starting from a fine mesh, we express adaptivity as a selective edge-collapse process governed by per-edge tags. Collapsible edges are aggregated in parallel using a warp-level hash mapping scheme that groups fine vertices into coarse super-nodes, while protected edges preserve local detail. This defines an implicit coarse mesh whose linear system is assembled algebraically by mapping and reducing fine-scale gradients and Hessians via efficient GPU reduction kernels. We solve the resulting coarse system with a preconditioned conjugate gradient (PCG) method and then prolongate the solution back to the fine mesh. Our approach integrates seamlessly with IPC's barrier energy and exploits GPU parallelism end-to-end. Across a range of challenging scenarios, we achieve up to 3x speedup over a state-of-the-art GPU IPC solver while producing visually indistinguishable results.