A genetic algorithm hybridisation scheme for effective use of parallel workers
Simon Bowly · Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference · 2019
Genetic algorithms are simple to accelerate by evaluating the fitness of individuals in parallel. However, when fitness evaluation is expensive and time to evaluate each individual is highly variable, workers can be left idle while waiting for long-running tasks to complete. This paper proposes a local search hybridisation scheme which guarantees 100% utilisation of parallel workers. Separate work queues are maintained for individuals produced by genetic crossover and local search neighbourhood operators, and a priority rule determines which queue should be used to distribute work at each step. Hill-climbing local search and a conventional genetic algorithm can both be derived as special cases of the algorithm.