  We introduce vertex block descent, a block coordinate descent solution for
the variational form of implicit Euler through vertex-level Gauss-Seidel
iterations. It operates with local vertex position updates that achieve
reductions in global variational energy with maximized parallelism. This forms
a physics solver that can achieve numerical convergence with unconditional
stability and exceptional computation performance. It can also fit in a given
computation budget by simply limiting the iteration count while maintaining its
stability and superior convergence rate.
  We present and evaluate our method in the context of elastic body dynamics,
providing details of all essential components and showing that it outperforms
alternative techniques. In addition, we discuss and show examples of how our
method can be used for other simulation systems, including particle-based
simulations and rigid bodies.
