Asynchronous multi-objective optimisation in unreliable distributed environments

Abstract

This chapter examines the performance characteristics of both asynchronous and synchronous parallel particle swarm optimisation algorithms in heterogeneous, fault-prone environments. The chapter starts with a simple parallelisation paradigm, the Master-Slave model using Multi-Objective Particle Swarm Optimisation (MOPSO) in a heterogeneous environment. Extending the investigation to general, distributed environments, algorithm convergence is measured as a function of both iterations completed and time elapsed. Asynchronous particle updates are shown to perform comparably to synchronous updates in fault-free environments. When faults are introduced, the synchronous update method is shown to suffer significant performance drops, suggesting that at least partly asynchronous algorithms should be used in real-world environments. Finally, the issue of how to utilise newly available nodes, as well as the loss of existing nodes, is considered and two methods of generating new particles during algorithm execution are investigated. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.