High performance parallel programming of a GA using multi-core technology

Abstract

Multi-core computers give the opportunity to solve high-performance applications more efficiently by using parallel computing. In this way, it is possible to achieve the same results in less time compared to the non-parallel version. Since computers continue to grow on the number of cores, we need to make our parallel applications scalable. This paper shows how a Genetic Algorithm (GA) in a non-parallel version takes long time to solve an optimization problem; in comparison, using multi-core parallel computing the processing time can be reduced significantly as the number of cores grows. The tests were made on a quad-core computer; a comparison of the speeding up in relation to the number of cores is shown. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.