The parallel tunneling method

Abstract

This paper describes the parallel version of the tunneling methods for global optimization of bounded constrained problems, taking advantage of the stochastic element of these methods that allows a smart exploration of the space. When the search for a point in another valley starting from points in a neighbourhood of the last (and best) local minimum along random directions, is performed at the same time on several processors, a more efficient and fast global optimization method is obtained. The performance of the parallel method is illustrated on several academic problems and on the specially difficult Lennard-Jones molecular structures problem.