What is Linpack?
The Linpack package is a collection of Fortran subroutines for solving various systems of linear equations. (http://www.netlib.org/Linpack/) The software in Linpack is based on a decompositional approach to numerical linear algebra. The general idea is the following. Given a problem involving a matrix, one factors or decomposes the matrix into a product of simple, well-structured matrices which can be easily manipulated to solve the original problem. The package has the capability of handling many different matrix types and different data types, and provides a range of options. Linpack itself is built on another package called the BLAS. Linpack was designed in the late 70’s and has been superseded by a package called LAPACK.
