Parallelizing Tabu Search on a Cluster of Heterogeneous Workstations

  • Authors:

  • Ahmad Al-Yamani;Sadiq M. Sait;Habib Youssef;Hassan Barada

  • Affiliations:

  • Computer Engineering Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia;Computer Engineering Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia. sadiq@ccse.kfupm.edu.sa;Computer Engineering Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia;Etisalat College of Engineering, Emirates Telecommunication Co., P.O. Box 980, Sharjah, UAE

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Heuristics
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

In this paper, we present the parallelization of tabu search on a network of workstations using PVM. Two parallelization strategies are integrated: functional decomposition strategy and multi-search threads strategy. In addition, domain decomposition strategy is implemented probabilistically. The performance of each strategy is observed and analyzed. The goal of parallelization is to speedup the search in finding better quality solutions. Observations support that both parallelization strategies are beneficial, with functional decomposition producing slightly better results. Experiments were conducted for the VLSI cell placement, an NP-hard problem, and the objective was to achieve the best possible solution in terms of interconnection length, timing performance (circuit speed), and area. The multiobjective nature of this problem is addressed using a fuzzy goal-based cost computation.