Reconfigurable VLSI architectures for evolvable hardware: fromexperimental field programmable transistor arrays to evolution-orientedchips

摘要

Evolvable hardware (EHW) addresses on-chip adaptation andnself-configuration through evolutionary algorithms. Current programmablendevices, in particular the analog ones, lack evolution-orientedncharacteristics. This paper proposes an evolution-oriented fieldnprogrammable transistor array (FPTA), reconfigurable at transistornlevel. The FPTA allows evolutionary experiments with reconfiguration atnvarious levels of granularity. Experiments in SPICE simulations andndirectly on a reconfigurable FPTA chip demonstrate how the evolutionarynapproach can be used to automatically synthesize a variety of analog andndigital circuits