Some Steps Towards a Form of Parallel Distributed Genetic Programming

—Genetic Programming is a method of program discovery con- sisting of a special kind of genetic algorithm capable of operating on non- linear chromosomes (parse trees) representing programs and an interpreter which can run the programs being optimised. This paper describes PDGP (Parallel Distributed Genetic Programming), a new form of genetic pro- gramming which is suitable for the development of fine-grained parallel programs. PDGP is based on a graph-like representation for parallel pro- grams which is manipulated by crossover and mutation operators which guarantee the syntactic correctness of the offspring. The paper describes these operators and reports some preliminary results obtained with this paradigm. be used to develop (grow) structures, like neural nets (5; 6) or electronic circuits (14; 13), which can be thought of as perform- ing some form of parallel computation. Also, in conjunction with an interpreter implementing a parallel virtual-machine, GP can be used to develop certain kinds of parallel programs (3) or to translate sequential programs into parallel ones (19). (The development of parallel programs should not be confused with the parallel implementations of GP, which are essentially meth- ods of speeding-up the genetic search of standard tree-like pro- grams (2; 4; 16; 8; 18). These methods are usually based on the use of multiple processors, each one handling a separate popula- tion, a subset of fitness evaluations or a subset of fitness cases.) This paper describes PDGP (Parallel Distributed Genetic Pro- gramming), a new form of genetic programming which is suit- able for the development of fine-grained or medium-grained par- allel programs. PDGP is based on a graph-like representation for parallel programs and genetic operators which guarantee the syntactic correctness of the offspring. In the following sections the representation and operators used in PDGP are described and some preliminary results obtained with this paradigm are reported.

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