Abstract
‘Unconstrained intrinsic hardware evolution’ allows an evolutionary algorithm freedom to find the forms and processes natural to a reconfigurable VLSI medium. It has been shown to produce highly unconventional but extremely compact FPGA configurations for simple tasks, but these circuits are usually not robust enough to be useful: they malfunction if used on a slightly different FPGA, or at a different temperature. After defining an ‘operational envelope’ of robustness, the feasibility of performing fitness evaluations in widely varying physical conditions in order to provide a selection-pressure for robustness is demonstrated. Preliminary experimental results are encouraging.
This work is supported by EPSRC, with equipment donated by Xilinx and Hewlett Packard. Related work is supported by British Telecom and motorola. Thanks to all.
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Thompson, A. (1998). On the automatic design of robust electronics through artificial evolution. In: Sipper, M., Mange, D., Pérez-Uribe, A. (eds) Evolvable Systems: From Biology to Hardware. ICES 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1478. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0057603
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0057603
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