Efficient cooperative strategies for parallel metaheuristics using MPI-3 features

Abstract

This paper explores highly efficient cooperative strategies for population-based parallel metaheuristics, focusing on the integration of shared memory and Remote Memory Access (RMA) operations provided by MPI-3. Most parallel metaheuristic proposals use island-based models with point-to-point communications in their cooperative strategies. These communications can saturate the network and buffers by sending information that often will not be used at the destination, thus resulting in a waste of resources when dealing with these types of applications. In this paper we evaluate other alternative communication protocols that use shared memory windows and RMA operations. Under these new models, the movement of information over the network is on-demand and requested by the source, maximizing resource efficiency. Although the approaches and descriptions in the paper are generic, a particular metaheuristic, the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), is used to carry out the experiments. The results obtained draw interesting conclusions that can serve to guide the future parallelization of other metaheuristics.