Publication Details
Evolutionary Approach to the Implementation Problem
evolvable hardware, evolutionary design, implementation problem, Turing machine
Evolutionary circuit design and evolvable hardware traditionally belong to the
area of electrical engineering. In this habilitation thesis, we interpret the
evolutionary design of computational systems from the perspective of computer
science. In particular, the evolution is able to produce a computing system
satisfying the given specification; however, in general, we do not understand how
and why the system performs a computation. It means that we cannot classify the
evolved systems as computing mechanisms. On the basis of experimental results, we
have shown the following: (1) There is no significant relation among the
complexity of the evolved circuits, chromosome size and novelty obtained.
Human-competitive results can be evolved at any level of interest if the problem
is formulated in a clever way. (2) It is possible to speed up the digital circuit
evolution using a common FPGA for a reasonable class of applications. (3) It is
possible to evolve sequential circuits at reconfigurable platforms operating at
sub-gate levels. In particular, the RS circuit was (re)discovered at the
transistor level. (4) Evolution is able to form computational elements in extreme
low temperatures. (5) The embodiment can be utilized to introduce additional
functions to digital modules in a manageable way; in particular, polymorphic
gate-level modules were discovered. All the problems investigated should
contribute to the explanation what it means for a computational system to be
designed evolutionarily and what we can expect from the evolutionary approach
that works on the position of human designer.
@misc{BUT192607,
author="Lukáš {Sekanina}",
title="Evolutionary Approach to the Implementation Problem",
year="2006",
pages="127",
publisher="Faculty of Information Technology BUT",
address="Brno",
url="https://www.fit.vut.cz/research/publication/8107/",
note="habilitation thesis"
}