THE PARALLEL GENETIC ALGORITHM AS FUNCTION OPTIMIZER

In this paper, the parallel genetic algorithm PGA is applied to the optimization of continuous functions. The PGA uses a mixed strategy. Subpopulations try to locate good local minima. If a subpopulation does not progress after a number of generations, hillclimbing is done. Good local minima of a subpopulation are diffused to neighboring subpopulations. Many simulation results are given with popular test functions. The PGA is at least as good as other genetic algorithms on simple problems. A comparison with mathematical optimization methods is done for very large problems. Here a breakthrough can be reported. The PGA is able to find the global minimum of Rastrigin's function of dimension 400 on a 64 processor system! Furthermore, we give an example of a superlinear speedup.