Publication Details

An Evolvable Combinational Unit for FPGAs

SEKANINA, L.; FRIEDL, Š. An Evolvable Combinational Unit for FPGAs. Computing and Informatics, 2004, vol. 23, no. 5, p. 461-486. ISSN: 1335-9150.

Czech title

Vyvíjející se kombinační jednotka pro FPGA

Type

journal article

Language

English

Authors

Sekanina Lukáš, prof. Ing., Ph.D. (DCSY)
Friedl Štěpán, Ing.

URL

http://www.fit.vutbr.cz/~sekanina/publ/cai/cai04.pdf

Keywords

combinational circuit, evolutionary design, evolvable hardware, field
programmable gate array

Abstract

A complete hardware implementation of an evolvable combinational unit for FPGAs
is presented. The proposed combinational unit consisting of a virtual
reconfigurable circuit and evolutionary algorithm was described in VHDL
independently of a target platform, i.e. as a soft IP core, and realized in the
COMBO6 card. In many cases the unit is able to evolve (i.e. to design) the
required function automatically and autonomously, in a few seconds, only on the
basis of interactions with an environment. A number of circuits were successfully
evolved directly in the FPGA, in particular, 3-bit multipliers, adders,
multiplexers and parity encoders. The evolvable unit was also tested in
a simulated dynamic environment and used to design various circuits specified by
randomly generated truth tables.

Published

2004

Pages

461–486

Journal

Computing and Informatics, vol. 23, no. 5, ISSN 1335-9150

BibTeX

@article{BUT46258,
  author="Lukáš {Sekanina} and Štěpán {Friedl}",
  title="An Evolvable Combinational Unit for FPGAs",
  journal="Computing and Informatics",
  year="2004",
  volume="23",
  number="5",
  pages="461--486",
  issn="1335-9150",
  url="http://www.fit.vutbr.cz/~sekanina/publ/cai/cai04.pdf"
}