A reassessment of the Snyman-Fatti dynamic search trajectory method for unconstrained global optimization

The aim of this paper is to present a thorough reassessment of the Snyman-Fatti (SF) Multi-start Global Minimization Algorithm with Dynamic Search Trajectories, first published twenty years ago. The reassessment is done with reference to a slightly modified version of the original method, the essentials of which are summarized here. Results of the performance of the current code on an extensive set of standard test problems commonly in use today, are presented. This allows for a fair assessment to be made of the performance of the SF algorithm relative to that of the popular Differential Evolution (DE) method, for which test results on the same standard set of test problems used here for the SF algorithm, are also given. The tests show that the SF algorithm, that requires relatively few parameter settings, is a reliably robust and competitive method compared to the DE method. The results also indicate that the SF trajectory algorithm is particularly promising to solve minimum potential energy problems to determine the structure of atomic and molecular clusters.