Mixed precision solvers for the all-at-once Runge--Kutta discretization of the heat equation

We study the effect of mixed precision on the numerical integration of the heat equation discretized with a Runge--Kutta method in time. A full space-time discretization is applied, which results in a very large and sparse linear system to be solved for the numerical approximations and the Runge--Kutta stages of all time steps. The linear system is solved by applying a suitable preconditioned iterative method that can be run in parallel. In order to speed up the solution process, the preconditioner is applied using a mixed precision framework. Sequential results show the robustness of the preconditioner, even when applied in mixed precision. Finally, we present numerical evidence of the improved performance of the mixed precision strategy when applied in a parallel environment, achieving up to a 50% reduction in CPU time.