A parallel version of SMS-EMOA for many-objective optimization problems

Abstract

In the last decade, there has been a growing interest in multiobjective evolutionary algorithms that use performance indicators to guide the search. A simple and effective one is the S-Metric Selection Evolutionary Multi-Objective Algorithm (SMS-EMOA), which is based on the hypervolume indicator. Even though the maximization of the hypervolume is equivalent to achieving Pareto optimality, its computational cost increases exponentially with the number of objectives, which severely limits its applicability to many-objective optimization problems. In this paper, we present a parallel version of SMS-EMOA, where the execution time is reduced through an asynchronous island model with micro-populations, and diversity is preserved by external archives that are pruned to a fixed size employing a recently created technique based on the Parallel-Coordinates graph. The proposed approach, called S-PAMICRO (PArallel MICRo Optimizer based on the S metric), is compared to the original SMS-EMOA and another state-of-the-art algorithm (HypE) on the WFG test problems using up to 10 objectives. Our experimental results show that S-PAMICRO is a promising alternative that can solve many-objective optimization problems at an affordable computational cost.