Stepwise-overlapped parallel annealing and its application to floorplan designs (Q756935)

The authors propose a parallel version of the simulated annealing algorithm. They use the idea of decomposition by Markov chains, i.e. the Markov chain used in the simulated annealing algorithm is truncated and decomposed into subchains, each of them being associated to a processor. They discuss the strategy for reducing the temperature and give encouraging numerical results on the travelling salesman problem. They also apply the algorithm to the floorplan design of VLSI circuits.