The Effects of Population Size on the Performance of BEAGLE GPU-Based Genetic Programming Runs

The Beagle framework, through GPU-based Genetic Programming, enables population dynamics previously unattainable (within practical time frames) by CPU-constrained Genetic Programming systems. This work explores how GPU-enabled population sizes impact the success of training for symbolic regression problems. Specifically, when using constant population sizes, we see benefits of using very narrow and deep searches (as narrow as 1000 individuals) for some problems, while other problems benefit from very broad and shallow searches (as broad as 10 million individuals). We also explore stepped population sizes that start with large populations and drop to small populations to balance the breadth and depth of search.

GPU-Accelerated Genetic Programming for Symbolic Regression with Beagle Framework

Beagle is a new software framework that enables execution of Genetic Programming tasks on the GPU. Currently available for symbolic regression, it processes individuals of the population and fitness cases for training in a way that maximizes throughput on extant GPU platforms. In this contribution, we report on the benchmarking of Beagle on the Feynman Symbolic Regression dataset and compare its performance with a fast CPU system called StackGP and the widely available PySR system under the same wall clock budget. We also report on the use of two different fitness functions, one a point-to-point error function, the other a correlation fitness function. The results demonstrate that the Beagle's GPU-aided Symbolic Regression significantly outperforms leading CPU-based frameworks.