Evolutionary Circuit Design in REPOMO - Reconfigurable Polymorphic Module

Evolvable HW, Evolutionary Methods, Biologically Inspired Circuits and Systems, Polymorphic Electronics

Polymorphic digital circuits are circuits composed of polymorphic (multifunctional) as well as ordinary gates. In addition to its standard logic function (such as NAND), a polymorphic gate exhibits another logic function (such as NOR) which is activated under a specific condition, for example, when Vdd, temperature or illumination reaches a certain level.  This paper describes a new REconfigurable POlymorphic MOdule (REPOMO). REPOMO is a four-input/output module consisting of polymorphic and standard gates whose interconnection is reconfigurable. It integrates logic as well as sensing function via polymorphic gates. REPOMO is intended to serve as a building block for the development of new complex polymorphic circuits and for evaluation of polymorphic circuits in real environments. As no conventional methods are available for the design of polymorphic circuits, initial experiments with the evolutionary design of polymorphic circuits are reported in this paper.