Evolvable Hardware:Brief introduction to the module

Andy Tyrrell

Department of Electronics

B005 - amt@ohm.york.ac.uk

Evolutionhttp://www.oneonta.edu/~anthro/anth130/cartoons.html

Module Content

• This module:

– presents the fundamentals of EHW technology;

– reviews existing and previews future reconfigurable devices;

– illustrates operation with evolution-guided design and hardware self-configuration experiments,

– provides application examples,

– practical fun! and

– covers specific difficulties and solutions for evolving complex systems and doing evolution with hardware in the loop.

Reconfigurable HW

Self-reconfigurable, evolvable

Automated Design

Artificial/Computational Intelligence CS/Math/Eng

Autonomous Systems

What is Evolvable Hardware?

Evolvable Hardware (EHW) is a new field at the confluence of Automatic Design, Artificial Intelligence, Reconfigurable Hardware, and Autonomous Systems.

Why Evolvable Hardware?

• Its main objective is the development of flexible and survivable systems that are capable of autonomous self-configuration, self-tuning, and self-repair.

• That can adaptively change through reconfiguration to provide appropriate signal processing, sensing and control - as examples, as well as survival in the presence of faults and degradation due to changing environments.

• EHW techniques have already proven successful in automated design, automated calibration and tuning, and in-field adaptation of hardware systems, sensing, control and robotics.

• Assist in design of electronic systems.

How Evolvable Hardware?

Intrinsic“hardware”

Extrinsic“software”

Analogue

Digital

Autonomous systems• Beyond physical reach to repair, beyond (or designed for absence of)

communications• Increasing degree of autonomy• Unmanned Vehicles (UAV)• Deployed sensing systems• Space systems• Places where humans can’t do it efficiently,

economically, etc.

Global Hawk

COTS digital reconfigurable hardware

PLA FPGA Virtex, VirtexII, VirtexPro (Xilinx)

COTS analogue reconfigurable hardware

Programmable Transistor Array Cell - FPTA2

Chip Architecture

Cell Schematic

A new generation of hardware

Fixed HW

Reconfigurable

Self-reconfigurable, evolvable

Generation

1st 2nd 3rd

Flexibility,fault-tolerance

A third generation hardware in terms of flexibility and fault tolerance

Automated Design

Artificial/Computational Intelligence

Design to be evolved

0 WhileTooFarFromWall 1 Do2 2 MoveForward 3 Do2 4 WhileInCoridorRange 5 TurnAwayFromClosestWall 6 WhileInCoridorRange 7 Do2 8 TurnParallelToClosestWall 9 MoveForward

Program Physical Hardware

The design to be evolved could be a program, model of hardware or the hardware itself

Model of Hardware

HDL code

vdd 20 0 DC 5.0Vvin+ 6 0 DC 2.5vm1 1 1 20 20 PMOS L={L1} W={W1}m2 3 1 2 20 PMOS L={L2} W={W2}

SPICE Netlist

Evolutionary is Revolutionary!

Labs!

Fundamental open questions• Can we evolve artificial systems in similar ways natural systems evolve?

–Advantages and disadvantages.

• How can we build devices/HW that evolve autonomously?

• Can we seamlessly embed the guiding mechanism for evolution with the morphing system (i.e. the “goals” - the “goodness”)?

• How does EHW scale-up?

• Can we use evolution to obtain intelligent systems, human competitive (and beyond) intelligence?