Adaptive memory programming: a unified view of metaheuristics

The paper analyses recent developments of a number of memory-based metaheuristics such as tabu search, scatter search, genetic algorithms and ant colonies. It shows that the implementations of these general solving methods are increasingly similar. So, a unified presentation is proposed under the name of adaptive memory programming (AMP). A number of methods recently developed for the quadratic assignment, vehicle routing and graph colouring problems are reviewed and presented under the AMP point of view. AMP presents a number of interesting aspects such as a high parallelization potential and the ability of dealing with real and dynamic applications.