Combining GPU and CPU for accelerating evolutionary computing workloads

Abstract: Evolutionary computing (EC) has proven to be effective in solving complex optimization and robotics problems. Unfortunately, typical Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) are constrained by the computational capacity available to researchers. More recently, GPUs have been extensively used in speeding up workloads across a variety of fields in AI. This led us to the idea of considering utilizing GPUs for optimizing ECs, particularly for complex problems such as the evolution of artificial creatures in physics simulations. In this study, we compared the CPU and GPU performance across various simulation models, from simple box environments to more complex models. Additionally, we create and investigate a novel hybrid CPU + GPU scheme that aims to fully utilize the idle hardware capabilities present on most consumer devices. The strategy involves running simulation workloads on both the GPU and the CPU, dynamically adjusting the distribution of workload between the CPU and the GPU based on benchmark results. Our findings suggest that while the CPU demonstrates superior performance under most conditions, the hybrid CPU + GPU strategy shows promise at higher workloads. However, overall performance improvement is highly sensitive to simulation parameters such as the number of variants, the complexity of the model, and the duration of the simulation. These results demonstrate the potential of creative, dynamic resource management for experiments running physics simulations on workstations and consumer devices that have both GPUs and CPUs present.