Evolvable Components From Theory to Hardware Implementations

At the beginning of the 1990s research started in how to combine soft comput­ ing with reconfigurable hardware in a quite unique way. One of the methods that was developed has been called evolvable hardware. Thanks to evolution­ ary algorithms researchers have started to evolve electronic circuits routinely. A number of interesting circuits - with features unreachable by means of con­ ventional techniques - have been developed. Evolvable hardware is quite pop­ ular right now; more than fifty research groups are spread out over the world. Evolvable hardware has become a part of the curriculum at some universi­ ties. Evolvable hardware is being commercialized and there are specialized conferences devoted to evolvable hardware. On the other hand, surprisingly, we can feel the lack of a theoretical background and consistent design methodology in the area. Furthermore, it is quite difficult to implement really innovative and practically successful evolvable systems using contemporary digital reconfigurable technology.

1 Introduction.- 1.1 Natural Computing.- 1.2 Bioinspired Hardware.- 1.3 Motivation for Research.- 2 Reconfigurable Hardware.- 2.1 Digital Cicuits.- 2.2 Digital Circuit Design.- 2.3 Field Programmable Gate arrays.- 2.4 Hardware Reused as Software.- 2.5 Reconfigurable Computing.- 2.6 Nanotechnology.- 2.7 Cell Matrix.- 2.8 Summary.- 3 Evolutionary Algorithms.- 3.1 Introduction.- 3.2 Variant of Evolutionary Algorithms.- 3.3 Some Other Features of Evolutionary Algorithms.- 3.4 Evolutionary Design and Optimization.- 3.5 The Evolutionary Algorithm Design.- 3.6 Formal Approach.- 3.7 Summary.- 4 Evolvable Hardware.- 4.1 Basic Concept.- 4.2 Cartesian Genetic Programming.- 4.3 Features of Cartesian Genetic Programming.- 4.4 From Chromosome to Fitness Value.- 4.5 Fitness Function.- 4.6 Applications and Degree of Hardware Implementation.- 4.7 Promising Results.- 4.8 Major Current Problems and Potential Solutions.- 4.9 Summary.- 5 Towards Evolvable Components.- 5.1 Component Approach to Problem Solving.- 5.2 Evolvable Components.- 5.3 Hardware Implementation.- 5.4 Extension of Evolvable Components.- 5.5 Summary.- 6 Evolvable Computational Machines.- 6.1 Computational Machines and Evolutionary Design.- 6.2 Cellular Automata.- 6.3 General Evolvable Computational Machine.- 6.4 Dynamic Environment.- 6.5 Evolvable Computational System.- 6.6 Properties of Evolvable Machines.- 6.7 The Computational Power.- 6.8 Summary.- 7 An Evolvable Component for Image Pre-processing.- 7.1 Motivation and Problem Specification.- 7.2 The Image Filter Design.- 7.3 Analysis of Reconfigurability and Size of the Search Space.- 7.4 Evolutionary Design: Experimental Framework.- 7.5 Filters for Smoothing.- 7.6 Other Image Operators.- 7.7 Dynamics Environment.- 7.8 A Note on a Single Filter Design.- 7.9 Summary.- Virtual Reconfigurable Devices.- 8.1 Chip on Top of a Chip.- 8.2 Architecture of Virtual Reconfigurable Circuits.- 8.3 Implementation Costs.- 8.4 Speeding up the Evolutionary Design.- 8.5 Genetic Unit.- 8.6 Physical Realization.- 8.7 Discussion.- 8.8 Summary.- 9 Concluding Statements.- 9.1 The Approach.- 9.2 The Obtained Results.- 9.3 Future Work.- References.