Evolutionary Computing Via FPGAs

fm6 writes "There's this computer scientist named Adrian Thompson who's into what he calls "soft computing". He takes FPGAs and programs them to "evolve", Darwin-style. The chip modifies its own logic randomly. Changes that improve the chips ability to do some task are kept, others are discarded. He's actually succeeded in producing a chip that recognized a tone. The scary part: Thompson cannot explain exactly how the chip works! Article here."

Comments

Stability

[Detritus]

Does the circuit still work properly if the temperature increases by 10 C? What if the FPGA data file is loaded into an FPGA from a different vendor or an FPGA fabbed on a newer process?

Resources on Evolutionary Computing

[ChaoticCoyote]

I've been evolving algorithms for a long time now, using finite state machines (FSM) which can be easily moved across architectures and programming languages. Quite often, an FSM evolves to exhibit surprising behavior -- and given the complexity of the machines, it is impractical to understand why the FSM acts as it does.

Note that I said "impractical" -- given time, I could follow the FSM's logic and discern it's "thinking" (and I have done so with simpler machines).

If you want real, concrete information about genetic algorithms and artificial life, I suggest visiting ALife.org or the U.S. Navy's GA Archive.

Shameless plug: For five years, I've been developing a free (no ads) web site, Complexity Central, devoted to evolutionary algorithms, artificial life, and emergent behavior. I've posted several Java applets that demonstrate genetic algorithms, cellular automata, flocking behavior, and related subjects.

This is part of my Coyote Gulch web site, which contains lots of articles, web links, bibliographies, and free code in C++, Java, and Fortran(!).