README

                    Finite Element Discretization Library
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                               http://mfem.org

MFEM is a modular parallel C++ library for finite element methods. Its goal is
to enable high-performance scalable finite element discretization research and
application development on a wide variety of platforms, ranging from laptops to
supercomputers.

* For building instructions, see the file INSTALL, or type "make help".

* Copyright and licensing information can be found in files LICENSE and NOTICE.

* The best starting point for new users interested in MFEM's features is the
  interactive documentation in examples/README.html.

* Developers interested in contributing to the library, should read the
  instructions and documentation in the CONTRIBUTING.md file.

Conceptually, MFEM can be viewed as a finite element toolbox that provides the
building blocks for developing finite element algorithms in a manner similar to
that of MATLAB for linear algebra methods. In particular, MFEM provides support
for arbitrary high-order H1-conforming, discontinuous (L2), H(div)-conforming,
H(curl)-conforming and NURBS finite element spaces in 2D and 3D, as well as many
bilinear, linear and nonlinear forms defined on them. It enables the quick
prototyping of various finite element discretizations, including Galerkin
methods, mixed finite elements, Discontinuous Galerkin (DG), isogeometric
analysis, hybridization and Discontinuous Petrov-Galerkin (DPG) approaches.

MFEM includes classes for dealing with a wide range of mesh types: triangular,
quadrilateral, tetrahedral and hexahedral, as well as surface and topologically
periodical meshes. It has general support for mesh refinement, including local
conforming and non-conforming (AMR) adaptive refinement. Arbitrary element
transformations, allowing for high-order mesh elements with curved boundaries,
are also supported.

When used as a "finite element to linear algebra translator", MFEM can take a
problem described in terms of finite element-type objects, and produce the
corresponding linear algebra vectors and fully or partially assembled operators,
e.g. in the form of global sparse matrices or matrix-free operators. The library
includes simple smoothers and Krylov solvers, such as PCG, MINRES and GMRES, as
well as support for sequential sparse direct solvers from the SuiteSparse
library. Nonlinear solvers (the Newton method), eigensolvers (LOBPCG), and
several explicit and implicit Runge-Kutta time integrators are also available.

MFEM supports MPI-based parallelism throughout the library, and can readily be
used as a scalable unstructured finite element problem generator. As of version
4.0, MFEM offers initial support for GPU acceleration, and programming models,
such as CUDA, OCCA, RAJA and OpenMP. MFEM-based applications require minimal
changes to switch from a serial to a high-performing MPI-parallel version of the
code, where they can take advantage of the integrated linear solvers from the
hypre library.  Comprehensive support for other external packages, e.g. PETSc
and SUNDIALS is also included, giving access to many additional linear and
nonlinear solvers, preconditioners, time integrators, etc.

For examples of using MFEM, see the examples/ and miniapps/ directories, as well
as the OpenGL visualization tool GLVis which is available at http://glvis.org.

MFEM is distributed under the terms of the BSD-3 license. All new contributions
must be made under this license. See LICENSE and NOTICE for details.

SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause
LLNL Release Number: LLNL-CODE-806117
DOI: 10.11578/dc.20171025.1248