In this paper we describe a general framework for parallel optimization based on the island model of evolutionary algorithms. The framework runs a number of optimization methods in parallel with periodic communication, in this way, it essentially creates a parallel ensemble of optimization method.
At the same time, the system contains a planner that decides which of the available optimization methods should be used to solve the given optimization problem and changes the distribution of such methods during the run of the optimization. Thus, the system effectively solves the problem online parallel portfolio selection.
The proposed system is evaluated in a number of common benchmarks with various problem encodings as well as in two real-life problems -- the optimization in recommender systems and the training of neural networks for the control of electric vehicle charging.