Design and implementation of a parallel genetic algorithm for the travelling purchaser problem

Nowadays genetic algorithms stand as a trend to solve NP-Complete and NP-Hard problems. In this paper we present the design and implementation of a parallel genetic algorithm-GENEPAR applied to a Job Sequencing Problem. more specifically the Travelling Purchaser Problem, which is considered as a NP-Hard problem. The parallel algorithm proposed is based on the island model and consequently implemented on a distributed memory MIMD computer. In order to analyze GENEPAR, a sequential heuristic was also implemented on the same environment using only one processor. Experimental results show that GENEPAR exhibits good performance in terms of time, compared to that other heuristic. It also improves the search quality.