A Tabu Search-Based Memetic Algorithm for Hardware/Software Partitioning

• Main Authors: Geng Lin, Wenxing Zhu, M. Montaz Ali
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hindawi Limited 2014-01-01
• Series: Mathematical Problems in Engineering
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/103059

Hardware/software (HW/SW) partitioning is to determine which components of a system are implemented on hardware and which ones on software. It is one of the most important steps in the design of embedded systems. The HW/SW partitioning problem is an NP-hard constrained binary optimization problem. In this paper, we propose a tabu search-based memetic algorithm to solve the HW/SW partitioning problem. First, we convert the constrained binary HW/SW problem into an unconstrained binary problem using an adaptive penalty function that has no parameters in it. A memetic algorithm is then suggested for solving this unconstrained problem. The algorithm uses a tabu search as its local search procedure. This tabu search has a special feature with respect to solution generation, and it uses a feedback mechanism for updating the tabu tenure. In addition, the algorithm integrates a path relinking procedure for exploitation of newly found solutions. Computational results are presented using a number of test instances from the literature. The algorithm proves its robustness when its results are compared with those of two other algorithms. The effectiveness of the proposed parameter-free adaptive penalty function is also shown.