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Evolutionary Algorithms on Volunteer Computing Platforms: The MilkyWay@Home Project

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Parallel and Distributed Computational Intelligence

Part of the book series: Studies in Computational Intelligence ((SCI,volume 269))

Introduction

Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) require large scale computing resources when tackling real world problems. Such computational requirement is derived from inherently complex fitness evaluation functions, large numbers of individuals per generation, and the number of iterations required by EAs to converge to a satisfactory solution. Therefore, any source of computing power can significantly benefit researchers using evolutionary algorithms. We present the use of volunteer computing (VC) as a platform for harnessing the computing resources of commodity machines that are nowadays present at homes, companies and institutions. Taking into account that currently desktop machines feature significant computing resources (dual cores, gigabytes of memory, gigabit network connections, etc.), VC has become a cost-effective platform for running time consuming evolutionary algorithms in order to solve complex problems, such as finding substructure in the Milky Way Galaxy, the problem we address in detail in this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Email: astro@cs.rpi.edu, 110 8th St. Troy, NY 12180, USA

    Nate Cole, Travis Desell, Malik Magdon-Ismail, Heidi Newberg, Boleslaw Szymanski & Carlos Varela

  2. Centro Universitario de Mérida, Universidad de Extremadura, Sta. Teresa Jornet, 38., 06800, Mérida (Badajoz), Spain

    Daniel Lombraña González & Francisco Fernández de Vega

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  1. Nate Cole
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  2. Travis Desell
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  3. Daniel Lombraña González
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  4. Francisco Fernández de Vega
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  5. Malik Magdon-Ismail
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  7. Boleslaw Szymanski
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  1. University of Extremadura, C/ Sta Teresa de Jornet, 38, Merida, Spain

    Francisco Fernández de Vega

  2. Yahoo! Inc., 701 First Avenue, 94087, Sunnyvale, CA, USA

    Erick Cantú-Paz

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Cole, N. et al. (2010). Evolutionary Algorithms on Volunteer Computing Platforms: The MilkyWay@Home Project. In: de Vega, F.F., Cantú-Paz, E. (eds) Parallel and Distributed Computational Intelligence. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 269. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10675-0_4

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