Mr. Thorsten Radde, CEO of IDEAL Software GmbH, released an article about the Genetic Algorithm (german: Genetischer Algorithmus) in the issue 5/2013 of the german computer magazine c't. The magazine has a print-run of 350.000 copies and is one of the most important computer magazines in Germany. The article was created during research work about optimization problems.

The Genetic Algorithm implements in software the nature's process of evolution (selection, crossover, mutation), to solve even highly complex optimization problems with high efficiency. For example the Knapsack (also called Rucksack) problem discussed in the article - which is a classic NP-complete problem of informatics - can be solved for 64 items within about one second - whilst using Brute-Force, i.e. computing each of the 2 to the power of 64 possible combinations, would require 17.000 (!) years. The Genetic Algorithm shows in a fascinating way, how powerful the principles of evolution work.

The source code of the article is freely available for download here (BSD-License). It provides a platform-independent generic C++ template library, which implements the Genetic Algorithm and can be used to solve arbitrary optimization problems. The library uses OpenMP, so all processor cores of a system are solving a problem in parallel. The source code includes two sample programs: a solution for the Knapsack problem as well as a solution for the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP).

 Link to an overview about the article in the c't magazine

 Download Source Code: genetic.zip