Solving large-scale QAP problems in parallel with the search library ZRAM

Program libraries are one tool to make the cooperation between specialists from various fields successful: the separation of application-specific knowledge from application-independent tasks ensures portability, maintenance, extensibility, and flexibility. The current paper demonstrates the success in combining problem-specific knowledge for the quadratic assignment problem (QAP) with the raw computing power offered by contemporary parallel hardware by using the library of parallel search algorithms ZRAM. Solutions of previously unsolved large standard test-instances of the QAP are presented, (C) 1998 Academic Press.