Development needs for diverse genetic algorithm design

This paper describes the development of an object-oriented parallel programming environment for genetic algorithms. This work, carried out as part of the ESPRIT III initiative PAPAGENA, intends to promote, develop and demonstrate the effectiveness of genetic algorithm (GA) and parallel genetic algorithm (PGA) techniques in a variety of real-world application domains. Central to this task is the development of a general-purpose programming environment for both parallel and sequential genetic algorithms. GAME (Genetic Algorithm Manipulation Environment) will offer extensive tools for the design, configuration and monitoring of GA applications. This paper gives an overview of the design philosophy behind GAME, indicating the types of service and facilities the finished product will offer. Intrinsic to the design is the provision of an extensive multi-levelled GA-specific library, offering GA and PGA applications, algorithms and operators. This will allow application developers the facilities to rapidly customise, configure and test novel GA and PGA designs. To sketch the types of application to be housed in GAME, a description of the applications currently under development within this project is also included. These range from finance through economic modelling, to protein structure prediction. Key design requirements for GAME are versatility, together with flexibility. For this reason GAME has been designed to run within both Sun OS and PC DOS operating system, with or without parallel support.