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Title: Analysis and implementation of branch-and-bound algorithms on a hypercube multicomputer

Journal Article · · IEEE Transactions on Computers (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (USA)
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/12.48868· OSTI ID:6913282
 [1]
  1. Oregon State Univ., Corvallis, OR (USA)

The authors explore the feasibility of implementing best-first (best-bound) branch-and-bound algorithms on hypercube multicomputers. The computationally-intensive nature of these algorithms might lead a casual observer to believe that their parallelization is trivial. However, as the number of processors grows, two goals must be satisfied to some degree in order to maintain a reasonable level of efficiency. First, processors must be kept busy doing productive work (i.e. exploring worthwhile subproblems). Second, the number of interprocessor communications must be minimized along the critical path in the state space tree from the original problem to the subproblem yielding a solution. It is difficult to improve performance in one of these areas without degrading performance in the other area. The authors present analytical models for the execution time of loosely synchronous and asynchronous parallel branch-and-bound algorithms, and they validate the models with data resulting from the execution of five algorithms that solve the travelling salesperson problem.

OSTI ID:
6913282
Journal Information:
IEEE Transactions on Computers (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (USA), Vol. 39:3; ISSN 0018-9340
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English