Evolutionary Programming to Optimize an Assembly Program

Abstract

Evolutionary programming was used to attempt to optimize a program written in the pseudo-assembly language Redcode, invented by A.K. Dewdney. Corewars is the game under which Redcode programs compete. Since 1994, the last standardization of Redcode, many complicated, effective Redcode programs have been written by people, but intense study is required to learn the nuances of the language and perfect programs. Since this is such a difficult task, evolutionary techniques may outperform humans. Multiple point, variable length crossover and change, insert, and delete mutations were the operators used. Relative fitnesses were calculated within a subset of the population on remote client computers. A food model was used to select the most fit programs. Current results are preliminary, but already one of the resulting programs wins 38% and ties 29% against a common type of human-written program. The best performance is 151 wins, 49 losses, and 0 ties against a typical human program.

Meeting Name

2002 Congress on Evolutionary Computation, CEC 2002 (2002: May 12-17, Honolulu, HI)

Department(s)

Electrical and Computer Engineering

International Standard Book Number (ISBN)

0-7803-7282-4

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2002 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Jan 2002

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