Linear Algebra and its Applications 509 (2016) 114–142 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Linear Algebra and its Applications www.elsevier.com/locate/laa Generalizing block LU factorization: A lower–upper–lower block triangular decomposition with minimal off-diagonal ranks François Serre ∗, Markus Püschel Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich, Switzerland a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: We propose a novel factorization of a non-singular matrix P , Received 6 March 2015 viewed as a 2 × 2-blocked matrix. The factorization Accepted 23 July 2016 decomposes P into a product of three matrices that are Available online 28 July 2016 lower block-unitriangular, upper block-triangular, and lower Submitted by A. Frommer block-unitriangular, respectively. Our goal is to make this MSC: factorization “as block-diagonal as possible” by minimizing 15A23 the ranks of the off-diagonal blocks. We give lower bounds 15A03 on these ranks and show that they are sharp by providing an algorithm that computes an optimal solution. The proposed Keywords: decomposition can be viewed as a generalization of the well- Block matrices known Block LU factorization using the Schur complement. Block triangular decomposition Finally, we briefly explain one application of this factorization: LU factorization the design of optimal circuits for a certain class of streaming Rank minimization permutations. Circuit complexity © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Schur complement * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses:
[email protected] (F. Serre),
[email protected] (M. Püschel). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.laa.2016.07.020 0024-3795/© 2016 Elsevier Inc.