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What are major differences between firedrake and fenics?

+10 votes

What are major differences between firedrake and fenics? Feature-wise and performance-wise?

asked Apr 8, 2016 by gtt FEniCS Novice (630 points)

1 Answer

0 votes

Be aware that this might be a slightly sensitive topic, but I think it is good that you ask, since many people are probably wondering the same thing.

The firedrake team have made some performance-wise comparison - checkout the video for FEniCS'15. As I remember it, there was not a clear conclusion on that.

Feature-wise, Firedrake is much more application focused that FEniCS and I believe many basic features such as tensor function spaces remain to be implemented.

Christian Jacobs used FEniCS and Firedrake. If I really needed an unbiased and honest opinion, I would ask him privately:
http://christianjacobs.uk/

answered Apr 8, 2016 by KristianE FEniCS Expert (12,900 points)

I would just like technical discussion, for example: here, Fenics uses Dolphin for this and that, while Firedrake uses pyop2 for similar stuff. The difference is that one is more performant while other feature reach. I think we can have very honest and civil discussion about it without any problems.

I mean, I've worked for some time with both, but I still don't understand architecture and trade-offs behind both projects enough to make decision which one is to take for my new big project.

commented Apr 11, 2016 by gtt FEniCS Novice (630 points)

yet now i didn't noticed the difference.Since i don't think that there have a difference.And it is a good reply.

commented Apr 21, 2016 by MelissaMorrow FEniCS Novice (100 points)

From my experience firedrake lacks some features (like adaptive solvers), but what about parralelability? Which one easier to scale (mpi-like)? Which one is more scalable?

commented Apr 24, 2016 by gtt FEniCS Novice (630 points)
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