Evolvable Hardware: Brief introduction to the module Andy Tyrrell Department of Electronics B005 -

Evolution

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 5.0V vin+ 6 0 DC 2.5v m PMOS L={L1} W={W1} m 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?