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Parallel-in-Time Probabilistic Numerical ODE Solvers

Bosch, Nathanael ; Corenflos, Adrien ; Yaghoobi, Fatemeh ; Tronarp, Filip LU ; Hennig, Philipp and Särkkä, Simo (2024) In Journal of Machine Learning Research 25. p.1-27
Abstract

Probabilistic numerical solvers for ordinary differential equations (ODEs) treat the numerical simulation of dynamical systems as problems of Bayesian state estimation. Aside from producing posterior distributions over ODE solutions and thereby quantifying the numerical approximation error of the method itself, one less-often noted advantage of this formalism is the algorithmic flexibility gained by formulating numerical simulation in the framework of Bayesian filtering and smoothing. In this paper, we leverage this flexibility and build on the time-parallel formulation of iterated extended Kalman smoothers to formulate a parallel-in-time probabilistic numerical ODE solver. Instead of simulating the dynamical system sequentially in... (More)

Probabilistic numerical solvers for ordinary differential equations (ODEs) treat the numerical simulation of dynamical systems as problems of Bayesian state estimation. Aside from producing posterior distributions over ODE solutions and thereby quantifying the numerical approximation error of the method itself, one less-often noted advantage of this formalism is the algorithmic flexibility gained by formulating numerical simulation in the framework of Bayesian filtering and smoothing. In this paper, we leverage this flexibility and build on the time-parallel formulation of iterated extended Kalman smoothers to formulate a parallel-in-time probabilistic numerical ODE solver. Instead of simulating the dynamical system sequentially in time, as done by current probabilistic solvers, the proposed method processes all time steps in parallel and thereby reduces the computational complexity from linear to logarithmic in the number of time steps. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on a variety of ODEs and compare it to a range of both classic and probabilistic numerical ODE solvers.

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author
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organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Bayesian filtering, numerical analysis, ordinary differential equations, parallel-in-time methods, probabilistic numerics, smoothing
in
Journal of Machine Learning Research
volume
25
pages
27 pages
publisher
Microtome Publishing
external identifiers
  • scopus:105018575344
ISSN
1532-4435
language
English
LU publication?
yes
additional info
Publisher Copyright: ©2024 Nathanael Bosch, Adrien Corenflos, Fatemeh Yaghoobi, Filip Tronarp, Philipp Hennig and Simo Särkkä.
id
f9588da4-1279-453b-8d9a-dda7f8a48ebd
alternative location
http://jmlr.org/papers/v25/23-1261.html
date added to LUP
2026-01-27 14:34:22
date last changed
2026-01-27 14:35:11
@article{f9588da4-1279-453b-8d9a-dda7f8a48ebd,
  abstract     = {{<p>Probabilistic numerical solvers for ordinary differential equations (ODEs) treat the numerical simulation of dynamical systems as problems of Bayesian state estimation. Aside from producing posterior distributions over ODE solutions and thereby quantifying the numerical approximation error of the method itself, one less-often noted advantage of this formalism is the algorithmic flexibility gained by formulating numerical simulation in the framework of Bayesian filtering and smoothing. In this paper, we leverage this flexibility and build on the time-parallel formulation of iterated extended Kalman smoothers to formulate a parallel-in-time probabilistic numerical ODE solver. Instead of simulating the dynamical system sequentially in time, as done by current probabilistic solvers, the proposed method processes all time steps in parallel and thereby reduces the computational complexity from linear to logarithmic in the number of time steps. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on a variety of ODEs and compare it to a range of both classic and probabilistic numerical ODE solvers.</p>}},
  author       = {{Bosch, Nathanael and Corenflos, Adrien and Yaghoobi, Fatemeh and Tronarp, Filip and Hennig, Philipp and Särkkä, Simo}},
  issn         = {{1532-4435}},
  keywords     = {{Bayesian filtering; numerical analysis; ordinary differential equations; parallel-in-time methods; probabilistic numerics; smoothing}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{1--27}},
  publisher    = {{Microtome Publishing}},
  series       = {{Journal of Machine Learning Research}},
  title        = {{Parallel-in-Time Probabilistic Numerical ODE Solvers}},
  url          = {{http://jmlr.org/papers/v25/23-1261.html}},
  volume       = {{25}},
  year         = {{2024}},
}