Ogier Maitre

Coarse grain parallelization of evolutionary algorithms on GPGPU cards with EASEA

This paper presents a straightforward implementation of a standard evolutionary algorithm that evaluates its population in parallel on a GPGPU card. Tests done on a benchmark and a real world problem using an old NVidia 8800GTX card and a newer but not top of the range GTX260 card show a roughly 30x (resp. 100x) speedup for the whole algorithm compared to the same algorithm running on a standard 3.6GHz PC. Knowing that much faster hardware is already available, this opens new horizons to evolutionary computation, as search spaces can now be explored 2 or 3 orders of magnitude faster, depending on the number of used GPGPU cards. Since these cards remains very difficult to program, the knowhow has been integrated into the old EASEA language, that can now output code for GPGPU (-cuda option).

EASEA: specification and execution of evolutionary algorithms on GPGPU

EASEA is a framework designed to help non-expert programmers to optimize their problems by evolutionary computation. It allows to generate code targeted for standard CPU architectures, GPGPU-equipped machines as well as distributed memory clusters. In this paper, EASEA is presented by its underlying algorithms and by some example problems. Achievable speedups are also shown onto different NVIDIA GPGPUs cards for different optimization algorithm families.

Fast evaluation of GP trees on GPGPU by optimizing hardware scheduling

This paper shows that it is possible to use General Purpose Graphic Processing Unit cards for a fast evaluation of different Genetic Programming trees on as few as 32 fitness cases by using the hardware scheduling of NVIDIA cards. Depending on the function set, observed speedup ranges between ×50 and ×250 on one half of an NVidia GTX295 GPGPU card, vs a single core of an Intel Quad core Q8200.

Speedups between ×70 and ×120 for a generic local search (memetic) algorithm on a single GPGPU chip

This paper presents the first implementation of a generic memetic algorithm on one of the two GPU (Graphic Processing Unit) chips of a GTX295 gaming card. Observed speedups range between ×70 and ×120, mainly depending on the population size. An automatic parallelization of a memetic algorithm is provided through an upgrade of the EASEA language, so that the EC community can benefit from the extraordinary power of these cards without needing to program them.

Data-Driven Multiobjective Analysis of Manganese Leaching from Low Grade Sources Using Genetic Algorithms, Genetic Programming, and Other Allied Strategies

Data-driven models are constructed for leaching processes of various low grade manganese resources using various nature inspired strategies based upon genetic algorithms, neural networks, and genetic programming and subjected to a bi-objective Pareto optimization, once again using several evolutionary approaches. Both commercially available software and in-house codes were used for this purpose and were pitted against each other. The results led to an optimum trade-off between maximizing the recovery, which is a profit oriented requirement, along with a minimization of the acid consumption, which addresses the environmental concerns. The results led to a very complex scenario, often with different trends shown by the different methods, which were systematically analyzed.

EASEA parallelization of tree-based Genetic Programming

This paper introduces the implementation of Koza-style tree-based Genetic Programming on General Purpose Graphic Processing Units (GPGPU) using the EASEA language, and shows how a GP algorithm can be easily implemented using EASEA and CUDA. Performance is first discussed on a classical toy problem taken from one of Kozas books and then on a real world problem inspired from aeronautics, that extends the results to difficult problems with large data sets.

PARADE: a massively parallel differential evolution template for EASEA

This paper presents an efficient PARAllelization of Differential Evolution on GPU hardware written as an EASEA (EAsy Specification of Evolutionary Algorithms) template for easy reproducibility and re-use. We provide results of experiments to illustrate the relationship between population size and efficiency of the parallel version based on GPU related to the sequential version on the CPU. We also discuss how the population size influences the number of generations to obtain a certain level of result quality.

Automatic Parallelization of EC on GPGPUs and Clusters of GPGPU Machines with EASEA and EASEA-CLOUD

GPGPU cards are very difficult to program efficiently. This chapter explains how the EASEA and EASEA-CLOUD platforms can implement different evolution engines efficiently in a massively parallel way that can also serve as a starting point for more complex projects.

Genetic Programming on GPGPU Cards Using EASEA

Genetic programming is one of the most powerful evolutionary paradigms because it allows us to optimize not only the parameter space but also the structure of a solution. The search space explored by genetic programming is therefore huge and necessitates a very large computing power which is exactly what GPGPUs can provide. This chapter will show how Koza-like tree-based genetic programming can be efficiently ported onto GPGPU processors.

Generic Local Search (Memetic) Algorithm on a Single GPGPU Chip

Memetic algorithms (MAs), evolutionary algorithms coupled with a local search routine, have been shown to be very efficient in solving a great variety of problems. This chapter presents the first implementation of a generic parallel MA on a general-purpose graphics processing unit card. An upgrade of the EASEA platform provides an automatic generation and parallelization of an MA for both novice and experienced users. Experiments on a benchmark function and a real-world problem reveal speedups ranging between × 70 and × 120, depending on population size and number of local search iterations.