Lanczos vectors I am trying to implement the Lanczos algorithm. If I implement it in Fortran or C, (i.e. in finite precision), will the vectors generated at each iteration still preserve their linear independence? Thanks.
 A: Absolutely not. Krylov vectors will quickly loose orthogonality. This applies to all Krylov-type processes, including Lanczos, Arnoldi, Golub-Kahan, Lanczos bi-orthogonalization, etc. That is the one major difficulty with all Krylov-type algorithms (CG, MINRES, GMRES, QMR, TFQMR, Bi-CGSTAB, Bi-CG, CGS, etc, etc.)
Most implementations make provision for a reorthogonalization procedure. Full reorthogonalization (i.e., against all previously-generated Krylov vectors) is not only very expensive, it has also been shown to be unnecessary. Partial reorthogonalization is a very popular alternative that comes in different forms. Your question is very far-reaching and the negative answer has too many implications to list. I recommend reading some of the following excellent books. They point to research paper where you can find more details.


*

*G. Meurant, The Lanczos and Conjugate Gradient Algorithms: From Theory to Finite Precision Computations

*Y. Saad, Iterative Methods for Sparse Linear Systems

*C. T. Kelley, Iterative Methods for Linear and Nonlinear Equations

*A. Greenbaum, Iterative Methods for Solving Linear Systems
Michael Saunders has excellent class notes at Stanford that summarize the state of the art: http://stanford.edu/class/msande318/notes.html.
In finite precision, there is already an important difference in the Arnoldi process depending on whether you implement the standard Gram-Schmidt update or the modified Gram-Schmidt update. For a quick overview, google "modified gram schmidt giraud langou" in Google Scholar.
A: They TEND to align -- they don't become completely parallel.  By all means, you can use Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization.  Dr. Underwood's classic program on netlib.org does exactly that.  
Given the number of Lanczos programs available, why write another one?  Look into ARPACK, underwood.f, or LASO2 for a good solution.
