Strategy for Individuals Distribution by Incident Nodes Participation in Star Topology of Distributed Evolutionary Algorithms

One of the strongest advantages of Distributed Evolutionary Algorithms (DEAs) is that they can be implemented in distributed environment of heterogeneous computing nodes. Usually such computing nodes differ in hardware and operating systems. Distributed systems are limited by network latency. Some Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) are quite suitable for distributed computing implementation, because of their high level of parallelism and relatively less intensive network communication demands. One of the most widely used topologies for distributed computing is the star topology. In a star topology there is a central node with global EA population and many remote computation nodes which are working on a local population (usually sub-population of the global population). This model of distributed computing is also known as island model. What is common for DEAs is an operation called migration that transfers some individuals between local populations. In this paper, the term 'distribution' will be used instead of the term 'migration', because it is more accurate for the model proposed. This research proposes a strategy for distribution of EAs individuals in star topology based on incident node participation (INP). Solving the Rubik's cube by a Genetic Algorithm (GA) will be used as a benchmark. It is a combinatorial problem and experiments are done with a C++ program which uses OpenMPI.