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The First Evolving Hardware?

Posted by kdawson on from the many-generations dept.

Masq666 writes "A Norwegian team has made the first piece of hardware that uses evolution to change its design at runtime to solve the problem at hand in the most effective way. By turning on and off its 'genes' it can change the way it works, and it can go through 20,000 - 30,000 generations in just a few seconds. That same number of generations took humans 800,000 - 900,000 years." The University of Oslo press release linked from the article came out a few days ago; the researchers published a paper (PDF) that seems to be on this same technology at a conference last summer.

4 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. I'm so, so sorry... by DurendalMac · · Score: 5, Funny

    I, for one, welcome our new evolving hardware overlords.

    God, I am so sorry, but it needed to be said...

  2. Computer Evolution??? by lord_mike · · Score: 5, Funny

    Bah! It ain't in the Bible! Next thing you know, you'll be telling me that Programs don't believe in the Users, and that we should just blindly accept the secular rule of the Master Control Program.

    That's it... isn't it? It's all just an MCP trick!

    Well, I still believe in and will fight for the users!!

    Thanks,

    Mike

  3. Re:Call me by ZX3+Junglist · · Score: 5, Funny

    Call me back when I can start a culture of Core Duos in a petri dish filled with a silicon nutrient. If you do it right, your experiment will call you when it's done.
  4. Re:Been there, done that... by Yoozer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ha! I counter your evolution with irreducible complexity. Take out a part and it'll start to beep and won't do anything!
    What good is half a graphics card, anyway? (and keep your heathen comments about SLI for yourself, please)