Patent ID: 7840504

Claim:
A learning enhanced simulated annealing method, comprising: (a) generating a search trial from a simulated annealing generator; (b) generating a search trial from a knowledge base generator taking into account historic search results generated by said simulated annealing generator and historic information stored in a knowledge base, wherein said stored historic information in said knowledge base contains prior results of combinations of the search trial from the similated annealing generator and the search trial from the knowledge based generator, whereby said historic information is used to generate a probability function for the generation of said search trial of said knowledge base generator; (c) generating a combined learning enhanced search trial by combining the generated search trial from said simulated annealing generator with the generated search trial from said knowledge base generator; (d) analyzing said combined learning enhanced search trial; (e) updating said knowledge base with the results of said analyzed combined learning enhanced search trial; and (f) iterating steps (a) through (e) until a satisfactory criterion has been reached.