Towards a taxonomy of parallel branch and bound algorithms

In this paper we present a classification of parallel branch and bound algorithms, and elaborate on the consequences of particular parameter settings. The taxonomy is based upon how the algorithms handle the knowledge about the problem instance to be solved, generated during execution. The starting point of the taxonomy is the generally accepted description of the sequential branch and bound algorithm, as presented in, for example, [Mitten 1970] and [Ibaraki 1976a, 1976b, 1977a, 1977b].