Punctuated Equilibria: A Parallel Genetic Algorithm

Abstract

A distributed formulation of the genetic algorithm paradigm is proposed and experimentally analyzed. Our formulation is based in part on two principles of the paleontological theory of punctuated equilibria - allopatric speciation and stasis. Allopatzic speciation involves the rapid evolution of new species after being geographically separated. Stasis implies that after equilibria is reached in an environment there is little drift in genetic composition. We applied the formulation to the Optimal Linear Arrangement problem. In our experiments, the result was more than just a hardware acceleration, rather better solutions were obtained with less total work. Note: Abstract extracted from PDF file via OCR