Combining cellular genetic algorithms and local search for solving satisfiability problems

A new parallel hybrid method for solving the satisfiability problem that combines cellular genetic algorithms and the random walk (WSAT) strategy of GSAT is presented. The method, called CGWSAT, uses a cellular genetic algorithm to perform a global search on a random initial population of candidate solutions and a local selective generation of new strings. Global search is specialized in local search by adopting the WSAT strategy. CGWSAT has been implemented on a Meiko CS-2 parallel machine using a two-dimensional cellular automaton as a parallel computation model. The algorithm has been tested on randomly generated problems and some classes of problems from the DIMACS test set.