A Parallel P2P Branch-and-Bound Algorithm for Computational Grids

Solving exactly Combinatorial Optimization Problems (COPs) using a Branch-and-Bound algorithm requires a huge amount of computational resources. The efficiency of such algorithm can be improved by distributing at large scale the computation required by the exploration of the search tree. In this paper, we propose ParallelBB, which is a P2P-based parallelization of the Branch-and-Bound algorithm for the computational Grid. The algorithm has been implemented using the ProActive distributed object Grid middleware. The algorithm has been applied to a mono- criterion permutation flow-shop problem and promisingly experimented on the Grid5000 computational Grid.