In this paper, we present a preconditioned positive-definite and skew-Hermitian splitting (PPSS) iteration method for continuous Sylvester equations AX + XB = C with positive definite/semi-definite matrices. The analysis shows that the PPSS iteration method will converge under certain assumptions. An inexact variant of the PPSS iteration method (IPPSS) has been presented and the analysis of its convergence property in detail has been discussed. Numerical results show that this new method is more efficient and robust than the existing ones.
