# Parallel optimization/Genetic algorithm/Genetic programming
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/parallel-optimization-genetic-algorithm-genetic-programming/36805
**Category:** Optimization (Mathematical)
**Tags:** parallel
**Created:** [March 31, 2020, 5:55pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/parallel-optimization-genetic-algorithm-genetic-programming/36805 "2020-03-31T17:55:02Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Neurovium](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Neurovium)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2020, 5:55pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/parallel-optimization-genetic-algorithm-genetic-programming/36805/1 "2020-03-31T17:55:02Z")
Hi,
I was planning to fully port a project to Julia. Checking the evolutionary optimization packages in Julia, I came across a few. It seems that the most mature one, Wallace ([GitHub - ChrisTimperley/Wallace.jl: High-performance evolutionary computation in Julia.](https://github.com/ChrisTimperley/Wallace.jl)), which had GA (genetic algorithm) and GP (genetic programming) is not maintained since early julia versions. The other ones, that I came across, have limited documentation so making it hard to know if they are retired or not:
[GitHub - wildart/Evolutionary.jl: Evolutionary & genetic algorithms for Julia](https://github.com/wildart/Evolutionary.jl) [GitHub - WestleyArgentum/GeneticAlgorithms.jl: A lightweight framework for writing genetic algorithms in Julia](https://github.com/WestleyArgentum/GeneticAlgorithms.jl)
Does anyone have an experience with these (or other candidates for GA and GP)? Are there any parallel (CPU) or GPU implementations of GA/GP (and in general multiobjective optimization )? something like this:
> **[Minimizing an Expensive Optimization Problem Using Parallel Computing...](https://www.mathworks.com/help/optim/ug/minimizing-an-expensive-optimization-problem-using-parallel-computing-toolbox.html;jsessionid=b20ed001132d9a87f2075634ae4e)**
>
> Example showing the effectiveness of parallel computing in two solvers: fmincon and ga.
Thanks
Nima
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### Author:  [@tbeason](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/tbeason)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2020, 6:29pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/parallel-optimization-genetic-algorithm-genetic-programming/36805/2 "2020-03-31T18:29:47Z")
[https://github.com/robertfeldt/BlackBoxOptim.jl](https://github.com/robertfeldt/BlackBoxOptim.jl) might be worth a look.
Also Evolutionary.jl seems to be actively developed. Several commits within the last month.
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### Author:  [@Neurovium](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Neurovium)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2020, 10:08pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/parallel-optimization-genetic-algorithm-genetic-programming/36805/3 "2020-03-31T22:08:18Z")
Thanks,
I checked BlackBoxOptim.jl… unfortunately, it has neither GA or GP (it has evolutionary strategy and differential evo which are evolutionary algorithms but not the same as genetic algorithm); though it seems to be designed for multi-objective optim. Also, I noticed that it has “build failure”.
Evolutionary.jl has zero documentation and no example. Have you seen doc/example elsewhere?
any other suggestions?
Thanks
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### Author:  [@leethargo](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/leethargo)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2020, 6:02am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/parallel-optimization-genetic-algorithm-genetic-programming/36805/4 "2020-04-01T06:02:23Z")
> [@Neurovium](#):
>
> Evolutionary.jl has zero documentation and no example. Have you seen doc/example elsewhere?
[https://evolutionaryjl.readthedocs.io/en/stable/](https://evolutionaryjl.readthedocs.io/en/stable/)
EDIT: Sorry, I didn’t look closely. There is this generated doc, but there is not much content…
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### Author:  [@compleat](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/compleat)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2020, 10:18pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/parallel-optimization-genetic-algorithm-genetic-programming/36805/5 "2020-06-21T22:18:41Z")
Hi All, I, too, am trying to find a GA optimiser for Julia, and I think Evolutionary.jl is in the works, but I tried using it and (IMO) it doesn’t work yet (except for some toy examples). However, the author seems responsive to feedback and seems to be actively working on it.
Oddly, I have managed to get BlackBoxOptim to do GA’s using trickery (e.g. limiting continuous variables to [0,1] and then rounding for binary) but that’s all I have found. Surely someone out there has a better idea?
I saw something in sklearn which I know Julia has, but I don’t know to use it.
Perhaps there is another package that has GA that has been ported from python?
Thanks for any ideas
[Update - since this post, the Author of Evolutionary has updated the package and provided additional documentation, and I have indeed gotten the algorithms to work usefully on examples in both GA and CMAES - Thank you Art!]