A distributed pool architecture for genetic algorithms

The genetic algorithm (GA) paradigm is a well-known heuristic for solving many problems in science and engineering. As problem sizes increase, a natural question is how to exploit advances in distributed and parallel computing to speed up the execution of GAs. This paper proposes a new distributed architecture for GAs, based on distributed storage of the individuals in a persistent pool. Processors extract individuals from the pool in order to perform the computations and then insert the resulting individuals back into the pool. Unlike previously proposed approaches, the new approach is tailored for distributed systems in which processors are loosely coupled, failure-prone and can run at different speeds. Proof-of-concept simulation results are presented indicating that the approach can deliver improved performance due to the distribution and tolerates a large fraction of crash failures.