Efficiency of the Simulated Annealing Algorithm in Solving the Traveling Salesman Problem

The traveling salesman problem has been solved earlier using the simulated annealing algorithm. While revisiting the problem, our study focuses on the efficiency of the simulated annealing algorithm. In particular, we compare the results obtained from simulated annealing with the results obtained by a brute force algorithm in order to judge the efficiency of the simulated annealing algorithm. The efficiency of the simulated annealing algorithm can be defined as the ratio of the number of configurations generated by the brute force algorithm to the minimum number of configurations required for simulated annealing to locate the optimal solution. The numerical value of the efficiency obtained by us could depend on the details of coordinates of the cities used by us in the traveling salesman problem, but the results are at least indicative of the efficiency of the simulated annealing algorithm.