GECCO-2008 New Contest Problem! Solving Rubik ™s Cube ($1,000 prize) In conjunction with the 2008 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO), Parabon Computation, the leading on-demand computation utility, announced today that it will sponsor a $1,000 prize competition in which contestants are challenged to evolve a program that can solve an arbitrarily scrambled Rubik ™s Cube. The competition is designed to demonstrate the combined capability of two complementary computing technologies provided by Parabon Computation. The Origin(tm) Evolutionary SDK (software development kit) uses computer-based evolutionary processes to derive (evolve) desired results and the Frontier Grid Platform harnesses the computational power of thousands of computers to deliver supercomputing as a service. Werner Randelshofer has developed a Java applet of an interactive Rubik ™s cube which can be found here. Contest Deadline: July 6th, 2008 Contest Rules are available here. To participate, contestants will need to: 1. Sign up for a Frontier account 2. Download and install the Frontier SDK. (You will be asked to provide your Username and Password again.) 3. Download and install the Origin Evolutionary SDK Documentation for Parabon ™s Frontier technologies can be found under the Dev Center tab. Winners will be announced during GECCO. General Competition organizers Dr. Terry Soule Department of Computer Science University of Idaho Moscow, ID, 83844-1010 Email: tsoule@cs.uidaho.edu Dr. Robert B. Heckendorn Department of Computer Science University of Idaho Moscow, ID, 83844-1010 Email: heckendo@cs.uidaho.edu Contact for the Rubik ™s cube contest Dr. Steven Armentrout Parabon Computation, Inc. 11260 Roger Bacon Dr, Ste 406 Reston, VA 20190 Email: steve@parabon.com Rather than writing a computer program to solve an arbitrarily scrambled Rubik ™s Cube (several such programs already exist), contestants must instead write a program that will evolve another program that is able to solve the cube in a minimal number of twists. The evolved programs start off with little or no capability, however, they are shaped by algorithms that mimic biological evolution ” for example, algorithms for selecting "parent" solvers from a population, breeding them and possibly mutating offspring solvers. Gradually, over a sufficient number of generations, a population of solvers will emerge that not only solve the cube, but do so with ever improving efficiency. For such evolutionary programs to be effective, large-scale computation must be applied, and that ™s where Parabon Computation ™s grid service comes into play. The company ™s ondemand computing utility will provide contestants with high-performance computing capacity in the weeks leading up to the conference to demonstrate the ease and affordability of the service. Contestants will submit their best solvers for judging ahead of the conference and the winner will be announced at GECCO 2008, which is to be held July 12-16 in Atlanta. SIGEVOlution Winter 2007, Volume 2, Issue 4

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