A Parallel Hybrid Genetic Algorithm-Simulated Annealing for Solving Q3AP

on Computational Grid
Lakhdar Loukil1 , Malika Mehdi2 , Nouredine Melab3 ,
El-Ghazali Talbi3 , and Pascal Bouvry2
Universite dOran
Faculte des Sciences
Departement dinformatique
BP 1524 El MNaouer Oran, Algerie
Loukil.Lakhdar@univ-oran.dz
1

University of Luxembourg
Faculty of Sciences
Technology and Communication
6 rue de Coudenhove Kalergi
L-1359, Luxembour, Luxembourg
{Malika.Mehdi , Pascal.Bouvry}@uni.lu
2

INRIA Futurs, Parc Scientifique de la Haute Borne

40, avenue Halley, Bt. A, Park Plaza
59650 Villeneuve dAsq, France
{Nouredine.Melab , El-Ghazali.Talbi}@lifl.fr

Abstract

1. Introduction

In this paper we propose a parallel hybrid genetic

method for solving Quadratic 3-dimensional Assignment
Problem (Q3AP). This problem is proved to be computationally NP-hard. The parallelism in our algorithm is of
two hierarchical levels. The first level is an insular model
where a number of GAs (genetic algorithms) evolve in parallel. The second level is a parallel transformation of individuals in each GA. Implementation has been done using ParadisEO1 framework, and the experiments have been
performed on GRID5000, the French nation-wide computational grid. To evaluate our method, we used three benchmarks derived from QAP instances of QAPLIB and the results are compared with those reported in the literature. The
preliminary results show that the method is promising. The
obtained solutions are close to the optimal values and the
execution is efficient.
Keywords: Quadratic 3-dimensional Assignment Problem,
Meta-heuristics, Insular Model, Hybridization, Parallel Genetic Algorithms, Grid Computing.

1 PARAllel and DIStributed Evolving Objects.

http://paradiseo.gforge.inria.fr

Can be found at

The quadratic 3-dimensional assignment problem

(Q3AP) is a generalization of the well-known quadratic
assignment problem (QAP). The Q3AP consists in finding
an optimal symbol-mapping over two vectors (one vector
for the QAP) so as to minimize an objective function.
An application domain of the Q3AP is the Hybrid-ARQ
(HARQ) protocol [22] used in digital communication
systems. The HARQ protocol is a packet combining
method known as the bit-to-symbol mapping diversity,
where the bit-to-symbol mapping is varied for each packet
(re)transmission unlike the simple retransmission carried
out by the Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) protocol.
This bit-to-symbol diversity has been shown to reduce
significantly the frame error rates and then achieve high
data throughput in wireless communication systems.
In the present work, we propose a hierarchical parallel
hybrid genetic algorithm for solving Q3AP problems.
Genetic algorithms (GAs) [12] are population-based
metaheuristics. They have been successfully used to solve
a great number of combinatorial optimization problems
[20, 6] and particularly for solving assignment problems
[18, 16]. They allow a powerful exploration of the solution
space and are naturally prone to parallelism. The first
motivation behind the use of parallel GAs in solving
the Q3AP is to explore larger search space by exploring

concurrently various search space sub-areas. The other

motivation is the acceleration of the search process which
is time consuming. Indeed, GAs require an enormous
amount of computations because of the genetic operations
of selection, transformation and evaluation of the fitness of
each individual in evolving the populations. However, GAs
have limited search intensification capabilities, which are
essential for neighborhood-based improvement.
Simulated annealing (SA) method is a probabilistic local
search metaheuristic used to solve combinatorial optimization problems. The SA method was described by
y [28]. It is based on
Kirkpatrick et al. [14] and Cern
the pioneering work of Metropolis et al. [17]. Its search
intensification capability and its ease to implementation
make it largely used for solving a number of challenging
optimization problems such as the quadratic assignment
problem [30], the circuit placement problem [31] and
the power system problem [15]. In the herein described
method, the SA has been combined to the 2-exchange
method to define a hybrid mutation operator to intensify
the search in the vicinity of a solution.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: Section
2 discusses some related works. The mathematical formulation of the Q3AP is given in Section 3. Section 4 defines
the components of the herein described method and offers
details on the parallel models and hybridization. In Section
5, the ParadisEO framework is described. In Section 6,
experimentation results are given with an introductory
presentation of the GRID5000 computational grid. Finally,
Section 7 presents our conclusions and future work.

2
2.1

erative Local Search (ILS) [24]. These methods have been

tested on the above instances and on two other instances respectively of size 15 and 16. For all these instances, except
the instance of size 16, the optimum has been reached after
10 hours for RoTS, SA and/or ILS.

2.2

Parallel genetic algorithm models

Genetic algorithms are population based metaheuristics.

Thus, they are naturally prone to parallelism. Several
parallel models of GAs have been discussed in the literature [5]. Regarding the way they manage the global
population, the closest model to the sequential algorithm is
the client server one. In this model, a single large panmictic
population is used and managed by the server. The behavior
of the sequential algorithm is not altered, the main loop
including the selection phase is managed by the server.
Then, the evaluation and/or transformation tasks (crossover
& mutation) are dispatched to the remaining processors,
mainly the clients. This model may be used especially
while the evaluation task and/or the transformation are time
consuming. An illustration of this model is depicted in
Figure 1.
E.A (Server)

Individual

"Fitness"
function measure

Related works
Exact and heuristic methods for the
Q3AP

Evaluation/transformation
Agents (Clients)

To the best of our knowledge, there does not exist much

work devoted to solving Q3AP. The most important work
found in the literature is that achieved by Peter Hahns team
at the University of Pennsylvania in collaboration with researchers from the University of California, Davis [11, 10].
They implemented the branch-and-bound algorithm and
tested it on five Q3AP instances, two of size 8 and the others of size 9, 12 and 13. All these Q3AP instances are derived from QAP in QAPLIB [3] except one of the two 8
size instance which is a real symbol-mapping problem. The
method was efficient for instances of size up to 12. However, computation times become excessive for the instance
of size 13 (more than 160 hours to reach the first optimum).
Moreover, four known metaheuristics that were widely used
to solve QAP have been adapted to the Q3AP: the Simulated Annealing (SA) algorithm [7], the Robust Tabu Search
(RoTS) [25], the Fast Ant (FANT) System [26] and the It-

Figure 1. Client server model

In the multi-population models, the global population is
distributed over several independent GAs that are evolving
in parallel. This is also known as the island model in
some works. Each island (node) is working on a different
sub-population. Then interaction is done at fixed frequency
by the mean of migration of a number of individuals from
any island to its neighbor(s). The neighbors are defined
following a chosen topology. Many works have pointed
out the importance of migrations in this model. Isolated
islands react as sequential independent runs of the same
algorithm whereas the exchange of individuals allows to
bring additional information to the local populations and
then to enrich the diversity. This permits also to spread
good quality solutions to the islands. This model is also

known as coarse-grain model. An example of this model is

shown in Figure 2.

n !
n !
n
!
min{
bijp xijp +
i=1 j=1 p=1

n !
n !
n !
n !
n !
n
!
i=1 j=1 p=1 k=1 n=1 q=1

Cijpknq xijp xknq }

(1)

under the constraints:

x I J P,
x binary.

I, J and P sets are defined as follows:

Figure 2. Island model

Fine-grained models commonly known as cellular
GAs [29], are also multi-population models and totally
distributed. Indeed, the population is mapped onto a complete connected graph, one individual per node. An edge
between two individuals (nodes) represents the possibility
for them to reproduce. An example for this model is shown
in Figure 3.

n
n !
!

P = {x 0 :

n !
n
!

xijp = 1 pour j = 1, ..., n};

i=1 p=1

xijp = 1 pour p = 1, ..., n}.

i=1 j=1

A Parallel hybrid genetic algorithm for

solving Q3AP

4.1

Individual encoding and fitness

Encoding individual. Similarly to QAP where heuristics usually exploit a solution representation based on permutations, Q3AP using the formulation given by equations (1) can be transformed into an equivalent permutationbased formulation that can be expressed as follows:

Individuals

n
n !
n

!
!
min f (p, q) =
bipi qi +
Cipi qj jpi qj

Figure 3. Cellular genetic algorithms

These models can be used in the same time to create hybrid or hierarchical parallel models. In this paper, we use
both island and client server models to solve the Q3AP in
computational grids.

J = {x 0 :

xijp = 1 pour i = 1, ..., n};

j=1 p=1

The Q3AP, like the QAP, is a NP-hard discrete combinatorial optimization problem [8]. An instance of size n has
n! n! feasible solutions.

Neighbours

I = {x 0 :

n !
n
!

i=1

(2)

i=1 j=1

where p and q are permutations over the set {1, .., n}.
According to the above formulation, optimizing a Q3AP
instance of size n consists in finding the optimal mapping
of n symbols numbered 1 to n to each vector of the pair of
vectors (p, q) in order to minimize the objective function
f (p, q). An advantage of the permutation-based formulation is that it allows a direct encoding of the population

Problem Formulation

The Q3AP problem was introduced for the first time by

William P. Pierskalla in 1967 in a technical memorandum
[21]. Mathematically, it can be formulated as follows [10]:

First parent
CRX points
Alternate parent
Offspring (step 1)
Offspring (step 2)
Offspring (step 3)
Offspring (final step)

individuals. Therefore, a genotype S (solution of Q3AP)

is represented by a pair of vectors (p, q), each vector is a
permutation over the set {1, 2, .., n}, n being the size of
the problem. In the remainder of this paper, we will use
the following notations: for a given solution S, we will
designate by S.p and S.q respectively the first and the
second permutation of S; S.p[i] designates the phenotype
value of place i; S.p[i] = j means that value j is assigned
to position i in permutation S.p.

4.3

8
8
1

6
6

2
*
7

3
3
3

1
8
8
8
8

3
7
7
7
7

8
4
4
4
4

6
*
2

2
2

1
5

5
5

Hybridization with the simulated annealing (SA) algorithm

GAs are exploration oriented algorithms, so they are

efficient to find good solutions scattered in a large search
space, but weaker to exploit those regions. On the other
hand, Local Search (LS) methods are well suited to
carefully tune structures which are very close to optimal
solutions. This is why hybrid methods have emerged. A
detailed review and classification of hybrid methods can be
found in [27].
According to the taxonomy of hybrid metaheuristics
proposed in [27], the hybridization scheme of the proposed
method is a low-level teamwork hybrid (LTH) method.
Indeed, the mutation operator of the GA is replaced by
the combination of two operators: a simulated annealing
algorithm and the mutation operator described above. Each
part of the combination is applied with a fixed rate.
Regarding SA algorithm, we have used the version
proposed in [13] which is an adaption to Q3AP of the
Connolly simulated annealing for the QAP [7]. It is a
Boltzman-based annealing algorithm. Acceptance probability function, h(f ), and annealing schedule, T (k), are
defined as follows:

(3)

i, j, p, k, n, q {1, ..., n}
F and D being respectively flow and distance matrices
of the associated QAP.

4.2

Figure 4. PMX crossover example

Fitness function. The fitness function used to evaluate

individuals is the function given by the equation (2), C being a six-dimensional matrix called cost matrix.
All instances used in tests are Koopmans-Beckmann instances which means that cost matrices are generated from
a pair of n n matrices, F and D. To generate sixdimensional cost matrices, we have used the following relationship proposed in [10]:
Cijpknq = Fik Djn Fik Dpq ,

Genetic operators

Crossover operator. The crossover operator used for

individual recombination is an adaptation of the Partially
Mapped Crossover (PMX) proposed in Goldberg et al. [9].
PMX crossover operator is applied twice: once on the first
two permutations in the two parents, a second time on the
other two permutations. To use this operator, two parents
P1 and P2 , and two crossover points are selected. P1 and
P2 are respectively designated as first and alternate parent.
As illustrated in Figure 4, the PMX crossover operator proceeds as follows. All genes of the first parent P1 between
the two crossover points are directly inherited by the offspring. Each gene between the two crossover points in the
alternate parent is mapped to the position held by this gene
in the first parent. Then the remaining genes are inherited
from the alternate parent. When a preferred position for a
gene is already filled, the gene is temporarily skipped over.
Duplicate genes are left temporarily in the offspring. In the
last step, duplicated genes that are outside the originally selected points are removed and replaced by elements that are
not placed yet.
Mutation operator. As a mutation operator, we have
used the trivial single 2-exchange method: two different
positions are randomly chosen and the values of these positions are swapped in the two permutations.

h(f ) = exp(f /T ), f = fk+1 fk

T (k + 1) = a T (k), 0 < a < 1
The neighborhood structure of a solution S is the set of
all solutions obtained from S by a single 2-swap of positions exclusively in permutation S.p or S.q of S. Figure 5
describes a generic template of SA for the Q3AP.

4.4

Parallelization

The herein described method is a hierarchical parallel algorithm with two levels of parallelism. At the high level
is the island model where a set of populations (islands)
evolves in a parallel way, each population is being evolved
by its own GA. GAs cooperate by exchanging their genetic

Require: S0 /* an initial solution */

1: S = S0
2: S = S0
3: T = T0
4: while (Stopping criterion not fulfilled) do
5:
r = random(1, n); s = random(1, n) s.t s &= r
6:
S1 = move(S.p, r, s); S2 = move(S.q, r, s)
7:
Delta1 = f (S) f (S1 ); Delta2 = f (S) f (S2 )
8:
if (Delta1 < Delta2) then
9:
Delta = Delta1
10:
S " = S1
11:
else
12:
Delta = Delta2
13:
S " = S2
14:
end if
15:
if (Delta < 0) then
16:
S = S"
17:
if (f (S) < f (S )) then
18:
S = S
19:
end if
20:
else
)
(
Delta
21:
p = exp
T
22:
x = random(0, 1)
23:
if (x < p) then
24:
S = S"
25:
end if
26:
end if
27:
T =T a
28: end while
29: Return(S )

Generate at random populations P1 , P2 , ..., Pn

Define connection topology of populations
while (Stopping criterion not fulfilled) do
Execute, in Parallel, GA(Pi ) for each Pi , i =
1, 2, ..., n
5:
Select and Migrate nm individuals to neighboring
populations
6:
Receive nr individuals from neighboring populations
7: end while
1:
2:
3:
4:

Figure 6. Algorithmic description of the

method.

the parallel transformation model used here does not change

the behavior of the GA but speeds up the search.

5
5.1

ParadisEO-based implementation
The ParadisEO-PEO framework

The proposed method has been implemented using

ParadisEO2 , a Grid-enabled framework dedicated to the
reusable design of parallel hybrid meta-heuristics by providing a broad range of features, including EAs, local
search methods, parallel and distributed models, different
hybridization mechanisms, etc. The rich content and utility
of ParadisEO increases its usefulness.
ParadisEO is a C++ LGPL white-box open source framework. It is based on a clear conceptual separation of the
metaheuristics from the problems they are intended to solve.
This separation, and the large variety of implemented optimization features, allow a maximum code and design reuse.
Changing existing components and adding new ones can be
easily done, without impacting the rest of the application.
ParadisEO is one of the rare frameworks that provide the
most common parallel and distributed models, portable on
distributed-memory machines and shared-memory multiprocessors, as they are implemented using standard libraries
such as MPI, PVM and PThreads. The models can be exploited in a transparent way - one has just to instantiate its
associated ParadisEO components. The models have been
validated on academic and industrial problems, and the experimental results demonstrate their efficiency [4]. The architecture of ParadisEO is layered as illustrated in Figure
7.
From a top-down view, the first level supplies the optimization problems to be solved using the framework. The
second level represents the ParadisEO framework, includ-

Figure 5. Layout of SA for Q3AP

material at a predefined number of iterations (parallel island model [1]). The exchange is performed in an asynchronous manner, i.e., no synchronization between the execution/generations of the algorithms is imposed. The emigrant individuals are selected through a stochastic tournament technique, the integration of the immigrant individuals being performed by replacing the worst individuals in
the population. At each migration phase, a part of the population (6% of the population size in our case) is selected
for the exchange. In addition, at each generation, the best
individual obtained so far is preserved. The migrating individuals contribute to maintaining diversity while ensuring
the coordinated convergence of all the islands. An algorithmic description of the method is given in Figure 6.
The second level of parallelism is a parallel transformation
of individuals within islands. At each generation, transformation operators (crossover and mutation) are parallely performed. Indeed, the transformation operator, mainly the hybrid mutation operator, is CPU consuming in the GA. Thus,

2 PARAllel and DIStributed Evolving Objects can be found at

http://paradiseo.gforge.inria.fr

are evolving on independent populations. First, the populations are locally generated using a random generation. The
communications between the islands are asynchronous. Finally, in each island, the transformation task is performed
in parallel using ten workers (10).
Island 1

Island 2

Island 3

Pop Initialisation

Selection
Evaluation

Selection
Evaluation

Asyn.Migration
Asyn. Migration

<<create>>

Parallel transformation

<<destroy>>

Figure 8. Sequence diagram of the used parallel model

Figure 7. A layered architecture of ParadisEO.

6
6.1

ing optimization solvers, embedding single and multicriterion meta-heuristics (evolutionary algorithms and local
searches). The third level provides interfaces for standard
MPI based programming. At this level virtually any standard conforming MPI distribution may be placed as layer
- MPICH-VMI [19] has been chosen for our specific case.
The fourth and lowest level supplies communication and resource management services - in this case the VMI interfacing component which offers support for MPICH-VMI.
The implementation relies on invariant elements provided
by the ParadisEO framework, offering support for the insular model approach, as well as for distributed and parallel
aspects concerning the parallel population evaluation. In
this context, parallelization related aspects are transparent,
the focus being oriented on the algorithm-specific elements.
The main steps to be performed, in order to construct the
algorithm, consist in specifying the encoding of the individuals, the specific operators and the fitness function. Furthermore, elements concerning selection mechanisms and
replacement strategies must be specified, along with configuration parameters (number of individuals, number of generations, etc).

5.2

Experimentation on Grid5000
The Grid5000 computational grid

The underlying hardware support for performing the experiments is GRID5000, a French nation-wide experimental
grid, connecting 9 sites which host clusters of PCs interconnected by RENATER3 (the French academic network).
GRID5000 is promoted by CNRS, INRIA and several universities4 (cf. [2] for details).
At this time the GRID is gathering more than 4000 processor cores with more than 100 Tb of non-volatile storage
capacity. Inter-connections sustain communications of 10
Gbps.

6.2

Preliminary Results

We have tested our algorithm on a set of Q3AP benchmarks, derived from he Nugent QAP problem instances,
found in QAPLIB ([3]). Three benchmarks were experimented: Nug12, Nug13 and Nug15. We performed four
runs for every benchmark and for both parallel models, island and parallel transformation (Para.Transf in Table 1). To
asses the efficiency of the hybridization mechanism, we also
perform experiments on a parallel GA without hybridization
with a parallel transformation (GA-Para.Transf). The experiments are conducted using 10 processors belonging to
Grid5000. The global used settings for the hybrid genetic
algorithm are:

Implementation

We implemented a three island parallel model with parallel transformation, using the Paradiseo framework described in the last section. The sequence diagram of this
model is illustrated in Figure 8. In this model, three islands

3 http://www.renater.fr
4 CNRS

- http://www.cnrs.fr/index.html - http://www.inria.fr

Inst.
Nug12

Crossover rate: 100%

Mutation rate:40% (20% for the swap mutation, 80%
for the simulated annealing search).

Nug13

SA iterations: 50.
Then, different aspects related to the island model have
been fixed regarding the studies available in the literature.
We use a global population of size 1500 distributed on three
(3) islands (500 individual per island).

Nug15

Topology: the ring topology, since the number of islands is relatively small. [5].

Best.F
658
604
948
2058
2012
2368
2612
2376
3728

Best.K(1h)
589

Best(10h)
580

1918

1912

2399

2230

Table 1. The computation statistics

Migration intervals: The migration intervals are fixed

to 20. From the recent studies [23], the migration frequencies should be moderated in order to award the
islands sufficient time for evolution.

its own GA. GAs co-operate by exchanging their genetic

material at a predefined number of iterations - emigrants and
immigrants. The exchange is performed in an asynchronous
manner. The hybridization is made using a simulated annealing algorithm embedded in a combined mutation operator. To evaluate our hybrid parallel algorithm, we use three
standard benchmarks derived from QAP instances Nug12,
Nug13 and Nug15. We used a parallel model composed of
three islands with a parallel transformation performed using
10 processors belonging to Grid5000. Then, four runs were
performed for each benchmark for the two parallel models.
The presented results are found after 1 hour.
The results indicate that the used hybridization scheme
(GA-SA) is efficient for the Q3AP. On the other hand, the
use of the parallel transformation is well suited to the hybrid genetic algorithm since the transformation operator is
the most CPU consuming task in the algorithm. This helps
to speed up the execution time. Comparing to the best solutions in the literature, the proposed algorithm performs better for the Nug15 benchmark. The parallel models allows
to speed up the execution for the other two benchmarks.
To conclude, the obtained preliminary results are close
to the optimal values for the three benchmarks. In the near
future, we plan to tune the SA parameters for better performance and accuracy. We also plane to implement other
parallel models and compare them with the herein described
method.

Migration size: Only 6 % of the sub-populations are

exchanged. According to the study made by Skolicki
et al. [23], big migrations are not necessary.
The results are summarized in Table 1. We compared
the results obtained after one hour of computation (Best.F
column) to the best found solutions in the same execution
time from the literature (Best.K column), with regard to the
optimal/best known solutions in the last column (Best 10h)
found after a 10 hour run. The preliminary results show that
the parallel transformation model is well suited to this hybrid algorithm since the transformation of the offsprings is
the main CPU consuming task in the algorithm. Comparing to the best found solutions in the literature, the parallel hybrid algorithm proposed in this paper performs better
than the literature best found in one hour for the benchmark Nug15, while there is no improvement for benchmark Nug12 and Nug13. Regarding the number of processors used (10 processors), we can conclude that the parallel
transformation model used in our hybrid GA, helps to speed
up the execution time while more efforts should be done
to improve the solution quality. On the other hand, for all
benchmarks, we notice a great improvement when we use
the hybridized algorithm (GA-SA) compared to a simple
GA (without hybridization) with the parallel transformation
model (GA.Transf in the table). This prove the efficiency of
the used hybridization scheme for the Q3AP.

Model
Island
Para.Transf
GA.Transf
Island
Para.Transf
GA.Transf
Island
Para.Transf
GA.Transf

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Concluding Remarks and Future Work

In this paper, we propose a parallel hybrid genetic algorithm. The herein described method is a hierarchical parallel algorithm with two levels of parallelism. At the high
level is the island model where a set of populations (islands)
evolves in a parallel way, each population being evolved by

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