Maximum Likelihood-based Online Adaptation of Hyper-parameters in CMA-ES

The Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (CMA-ES) is widely accepted as a robust derivative-free continuous optimization algorithm for non-linear and non-convex optimization problems. CMA-ES is well known to be almost parameterless, meaning that only one hyper-parameter, the population size, is proposed to be tuned by the user. In this paper, we propose a principled approach called self-CMA-ES to achieve the online adaptation of CMA-ES hyper-parameters in order to improve its overall performance. Experimental results show that for larger-than-default population size, the default settings of hyper-parameters of CMA-ES are far from being optimal, and that self-CMA-ES allows for dynamically approaching optimal settings.Comment: 13th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN 2014) (2014

Task Scheduling Algorithm Using Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (CMA-ES) in Cloud Computing

The cloud computing is considered as a computational model which provides the uses requests with resources upon any demand and needs.The need for planning the scheduling of the user's jobs has emerged as an important challenge in the field of cloud computing. It is mainly due to several reasons, including ever-increasing advancements of information technology and an increase of applications and user needs for these applications with high quality, as well as, the popularity of cloud computing among user and rapidly growth of them during recent years. This research presents the Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (CMA-ES), an evolutionary algorithm in the field of optimization for tasks scheduling in the cloud computing environment. The findings indicate that presented algorithm, led to a reduction in execution time of all tasks, compared to SPT, LPT, and RLPT algorithms.Keywords: Cloud Computing, Task Scheduling, Virtual Machines (VMs), Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (CMA-ES

Maximum Likelihood-based Online Adaptation of Hyper-parameters in CMA-ES

International audienceThe Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (CMA-ES) is widely accepted as a robust derivative-free continuous optimization algorithm for non-linear and non-convex optimization problems. CMA-ES is well known to be almost parameterless, meaning that only one hyper-parameter, the population size, is proposed to be tuned by the user. In this paper, we propose a principled approach called self-CMA-ES to achieve the online adaptation of CMA-ES hyper-parameters in order to improve its overall performance. Experimental results show that for larger-than-default population size, the default settings of hyper-parameters of CMA-ES are far from being optimal, and that self-CMA-ES allows for dynamically approaching optimal settings

Otimização multimodal para domínio contínuo com heurísticas de agrupamento adaptativo

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Computação, Florianópolis, 2015.O crescente interesse nos métodos de otimização multimodal se deve a uma característica, quase que geral, dos problemas reais - a multimodalidade. Essa característica implica que o problema possui mais de uma solução ótima. Encontrar um conjunto de soluções ótimas é o objetivo dos métodos de otimização multimodal. O método apresentado neste trabalho, Estratégia de Evolução Multimodal baseada em Multi-população, ou NMESIS como será chamado devido a sua tradução para a língua inglesa Niching Multi-population Evolution Strategy with Improved Search, é um algoritmo de niching paralelo e explícito que utiliza como base a Adaptação da Matriz de Covariância. O método representa cada população como uma distribuição normal, o que permite utilizar técnicas destinadas à modelos de misturas gaussianas. Essa escolha ajuda a simplificar a parametrização, enquanto facilita o desenvolvimento de operadores robustos para troca de informação entre os nichos. O NMESIS foi avaliado através de um benchmark, utilizado em competições de algoritmos de niching, que contêm 20 problemas de teste, especialmente concebidos para avaliação de métodos de otimização multimodal, e seu desempenho foi comparado a outros métodos no estado da arte como NMMSO, dADE e NEA2 (último vencedor do CEC 2013). Os resultados apresentados mostram que o NMESIS conseguiu encontrar mais soluções que os concorrentes. Outro fator positivo foi a consistência dos resultados, mesmo com o aumento da precisão.Abstract : The growing interest in multimodal optimization methods is motivated by an characteristic commonly found in real problems --- multimodality. Find a set of optimal solutions is the target of multimodal optimization research. The method presented in this work, called Niching Multi-population Evolution Strategy with Improved Search (NMESIS), is a parallel niching method which is also explicit. Each niche is maintained by a CMA-ES instance. NMESIS abstracts the niche population as a Gaussian Mixture Model, allowing to use methods that are developed for classification and clustering. This helps to create robust operators to detect overlaps. Also, the abstraction allows a better communication mechanism between niches (migration). We apply a benchmark of 20 test functions, specially designed for multimodal optimization evaluation, and compare the performance with state-of- the-art methods. Finally we discuss the results and show that the proposed approach can reach better and stable results even in high-dimensional spaces