ImGA: an improved genetic algorithm for partitioned scheduling on heterogeneous multi-core systems

Efficient mapping of tasks onto heterogeneous multi-core systems is very challenging especially in the context of real-time applications. Assigning tasks to cores is an NP-hard problem and solving it requires the use of meta-heuristics. Relevantly, genetic algorithms have already proven to be one of the most powerful and widely used stochastic tools to solve this problem. Conventional genetic algorithms were initially defined as a general evolutionary algorithm based on blind operators with pseudo-random operations. It is commonly admitted that the use of these operators is quite poor for an efficient exploration of big problems. Likewise, since exhaustive exploration of the solution space is unrealistic, a potent option is often to guide the exploration process by hints, derived by problem structure. This guided exploration prioritizes fitter solutions to be part of next generations and avoids exploring unpromising configurations by transmitting a set of predefined criteria from parents to children. Consequently, genetic operators, such as initial population, crossover, mutation must incorporate specific domain knowledge to intelligently guide the exploration of the design space. In this paper, an improved genetic algorithm (ImGA) is proposed to enhance the conventional implementation of this evolutionary algorithm. In our experiments, we proved that ImGA leads to perceptible increase in the performance of the genetic algorithm and its convergence capabilities.