A generic architecture of complete intrinsic evolvable digital circuits

Abstract

Evolvable Hardware is inspired by natural evolution and based on Evolutionary algorithms, for automatic design of hardware systems. By exploring a large design search space, EHW may find solutions for a task, unsolvable, or more optimal than those found using traditional design methods. During evolution it is necessary to evaluate a large number of different circuits which is normally most efficiently undertaken in reconfigurable hardware. For digital circuits design, field programmable gate arrays are very applicable. Thus, this paper presents a generic virtual reconfigurable architecture for designing complete intrinsic evolvable digital circuits on FPGAs. The experimental results show that it is a promising approach towards autonomous and on-line reconfigurable machines capable of adapting to real-world problems.