Traveling salesman heuristics and embedding dimension in the Hopfield model
Kahng · 1989
The author discusses methods for improving performance of the Hopfield-Tank quadratic minimization approach to the traveling salesman problem (TSP). A wide range of geometric (e.g. convex-hull based) topological and cutting-plane heuristics are investigated. The author also investigated performance for non-Euclidean and nonmetrizable TSPs using a new concept of embedding dimension. Implications concerning the nature of the Hopfield energy surface are discussed. It is concluded that the Hopfield-Tank formulation is not so robust as might be hoped; however, it remains well suited to many important applications.>