Automated framework for FPGA-based parallel genetic algorithms
File(s)fpl14gg-final.pdf (847.4 KB)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Guo, L
Thomas, DBJ
Guo, C
Luk, W
Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
Parallel genetic algorithms (pGAs) are a variant of genetic algorithms which can promise substantial gains in both efficiency of execution and quality of results. pGAs have attracted researchers to implement them in FPGAs, but the implementation always needs large human effort. To simplify the implementation process and make the hardware pGA designs accessible to potential non-expert users, this paper proposes a general-purpose framework, which takes in a high-level description of the optimisation target and automatically generates pGA designs for FPGAs. Our pGA system exploits the two levels of parallelism found in GA instances and genetic operations, allowing users to tailor the architecture for resource constraints at compile-time. The framework also enables users to tune a subset of parameters at run-time without time-consuming recompilation. Our pGA design is more flexible than previous ones, and has an average speedup of 26 times compared to the multi-core counterparts over five combinatorial and numerical optimisation problems. When compared with a GPU, it also shows a 6.8 times speedup over a combinatorial application.
Date Issued
2014-01-01
Date Acceptance
2014-09-02
Citation
24th International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and Applications, FPL 2014, 2014
ISBN
9781479933624
Publisher
IEEE
Journal / Book Title
24th International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and Applications, FPL 2014
Copyright Statement
© 2014 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
Source
24th International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and Applications
Publication Status
Published
Start Date
2014-09-02
Finish Date
2014-09-04
Coverage Spatial
Munich