Using Simulated Annealing to Design Interconnection Networks .
F. Comellas, M. A. Fiol
Departament de Matemàtica Aplicada i Telemàtica; Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
DMAT Report 05-290, January 1990
Simulated annealing is a computational technique reported to give good results in coping with complex combinatorial problems. These problems usually consist of finding a global minimum of a cost function on a (large) set of states (also known as feasible solutions). In this paper we explore modifications to the standard simulated annealing method that we apply to the design of dense interconnection networks, that is networks that have as many nodes as possible for a given maximum number of links from each node to other nodes, and a given maximum distance between all pair of nodes. We are particularly interested in the directed-symmetric case in wich all links have a direction, and the network, roughly speaking, looks the same from any node. In that case each node may execute, without modifications, the same communication software. The set of states are the different networks and a cost function is defined and is used to accept or reject a new network obtained from a modification of a previously accepted one. The annealing algorithm reduces the `temperature' parameter and drives the sequence of networks towards an optimum. The results show that with less computational effort than in more traditional approaches we are able to find the best results known and in some cases improve them.
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