The magic tuning problem

Improved Knowledge Acquisition for High-Performance Heuristic Search
J.P. Bekmann and Achim Hoffmann

http://www.ijcai.org/papers/1668.pdf

We present a new incremental knowledge acquisition approach that incrementally improves the performance of a probabilistic search algorithm. The approach addresses the known dif culty of tuning probabilistic search algorithms, such as genetic algorithms or simulated annealing, for a given search problem by the introduction of domain knowledge. We show that our approach is effective for developing heuristic algorithms for dif ficult combinatorial problems by solving benchmarks from the industrially relevant domain of VLSI detailed routing. In this paper we present advanced techniques for improving our knowledge acquisition approach. We also present a novel method that uses domain knowledge for the prioritisation of mutation operators, increasing the GA's ef ciency noticeably.