Heuristic-based architecture generation for complex computer system optimisation

Having come of age in the last decade, the use of architecture to describe complex systems, especially in software, is now maturing. With our current ability to describe, represent, analyse and evaluate architectures comes the next logical step in our application of architecture to system design and optimisation. Driven by the increasing scale and complexity of modern systems, the designers have been forced to find new ways of managing the difficult and complex task of balancing the quality trade-offs inherent in all architectures. Architecture-based optimisation has the potential to not only provide designers with a practical method for approaching this task, but also to provide a generic mechanism for increasing the overall quality of system design. In this paper we explore the issues that surround the development of architectural optimisation and present an example of heuristic-based optimisation of a system with respect to concrete goals.