 <p>Although technically it is possible as Aladdin has answered, I would strongly suggest you not to use PHP/Yii for this. Neither Yii nor PHP is desgined for this sort of work. Yii is really a wonderful framework but it won't really help you with GA programming. PHP is versatile and fast, great for scripting etc. But it is not designed to be used in cases of GA where you will run many generations and runtime performance is a big factor. C++ or similar performing languages you should be considering.</p> <p>You mentioned time as a constraint both run time and development time. I would advice you to use a existing python/C++ library for GA algorithims and quickly implement the same </p> <p>Python Library: <a href="http://pyevolve.sourceforge.net/" rel="nofollow">http://pyevolve.sourceforge.net/</a> Source here: <a href="https://github.com/perone/Pyevolve" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/perone/Pyevolve</a></p> <p>C++ Library: <a href="http://lancet.mit.edu/ga/" rel="nofollow">http://lancet.mit.edu/ga/</a></p> <p>If performance of the algorithm is extremely important then C++ is the obvious choice. If presentation and flexibility then use the Python one, which I prefer personally. </p> <p>However if you wish to still use Yii/PHP, i suggest you compile these programs and call them in a console application / command in Yii and just use Yii to process the parameters store and display the output. </p>