Replace the flex metric factorization with a block preconditioner

Every step, the flex block of the implicit effective metric M + K was
factorized by sparse Cholesky, because K depends on the configuration. On
model/flex/bag.xml, added here, that is roughly half the step, against a
comparable share for the constraint solve it exists to accelerate.

Keep only the metric's per-vertex 3x3 diagonal blocks, prefactored. Neither
consumer needs the exact inverse: the CG constraint solver only wants a
preconditioner, and qacc_smooth can come from an iterative solve using those
blocks. They are O(n) to build and to apply, but weaker, so CG runs about twice
the iterations and qacc_smooth becomes an iteration rather than a direct solve.
Net, the bag model steps roughly twice as fast.

The preconditioner, by metric state. Inactive, meaning no flex elasticity or an
explicit integrator: M^-1, unchanged. Bending only (nefmK == 0): M^-1 plus the
exact constant bending factor from mj_setConst on the dofs it covers,
unchanged; that factor is built at model compile time and costs nothing per
step. Per-step stiffness: M^-1 plus the 3x3 blocks, where before it was a
per-step sparse Cholesky, or, when M couples across the flex block, an inner
PCG of up to 50 iterations run once per outer CG iteration.

Only models carrying per-step stretch stiffness change in wall-clock. Both
ponchos hold their timing and take slightly fewer CG iterations than before,
because the preconditioner is now symmetric: it applies M^-1 and the covered
blocks to disjoint sets of dofs, where previously the two overlapped and the
operator was not symmetric, which PCG requires.

mjd_effSolve is the accurate solve of (M + K)x = b; what used to carry that
name only preconditions and is now mjd_effPrec. Its CG guarded the division by
pAp with mjMINVAL, an absolute floor on a quantity that scales with the square
of the right-hand side, so a small b aborted the solve while the curvature was
healthy: four flex models were quietly left short of tolerance. For an SPD
metric the guard is positivity, and with that the same solves converge. The qacc_smooth call site in
mj_fwdAcceleration is textually unchanged but now reaches the iterative solve,
which converges on opt.tolerance rather than a hardcoded threshold, floored in
mjUSESINGLE builds where the squared target is unreachable in float. Reaching
the iteration cap names the ill-conditioned flex stiffness and then reports it
through mjWARN_INERTIA, rather than returning an under-converged result.
Covered dofs are located by walking the covered rows of the stiffness matrix,
as they need not be 3-aligned from dof 0: any joint declared before a flexcomp
shifts them.

mjData.efm_L_rownnz, efm_L_rowadr and efm_L_colind described the sparsity of
the deleted factorization and are removed: left NULL with nonzero mjxmacro
extents they made the Python bindings hand back uninitialized arrays.
efm_active loses the value 2 for the same reason, nothing selects a solve path
on preconditioner exactness any more. Both are recorded under breaking changes.

model/flex/bag.xml is added because no shipped model carried per-step stretch
stiffness. The ponchos are bending-only and trampoline.xml uses an explicit
integrator, so the metric never activates there. It is excluded from
WriteReadCompareTest: stretch stiffness amplifies rest geometry that XML rounds
on save.
This commit is contained in:
Alessio
2026-07-29 14:19:58 +01:00
parent d400914e97
commit 55d13aec5f
16 changed files with 4914 additions and 485 deletions
+7 -1
View File
@@ -97,9 +97,15 @@ MJAPI void mjd_effShift(const mjModel* m, mjData* d);
// res += B*vec (the stiffness part of the metric; caller supplies the M part)
MJAPI void mjd_effMulAdd(const mjModel* m, mjData* d, mjtNum* res, const mjtNum* vec);
// x = (M + B)^-1 b to 1e-10 relative; x = M^-1 b when the metric is inactive
// solve (M + B) x = b by PCG preconditioned with mjd_effPrec, to opt.tolerance on the relative
// residual; x = M^-1 b when the metric is inactive. Warns (mjWARN_INERTIA) if the iteration cap
// is reached before convergence, in which case x is returned under-converged.
MJAPI void mjd_effSolve(const mjModel* m, mjData* d, mjtNum* x, const mjtNum* b);
// apply the metric preconditioner: x ~= (M + B)^-1 b, a cheap fixed linear operator, NOT a solve.
// Exact only when the metric is inactive (x = M^-1 b); otherwise approximate by construction.
MJAPI void mjd_effPrec(const mjModel* m, mjData* d, mjtNum* x, const mjtNum* b);
#ifdef __cplusplus
}