Evolvable Hardware: Brief introduction to the module

1. Evolvable Hardware:Brief introduction to the module Andy Tyrrell Department of Electronics B005 - amt@ohm.york.ac.uk

2. Evolution http://www.oneonta.edu/~anthro/anth130/cartoons.html

3. 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.

4. What is Evolvable Hardware? Evolvable Hardware (EHW) is a new field at the confluence of Automatic Design, Artificial Intelligence, Reconfigurable Hardware, and Autonomous Systems. Reconfigurable HW Automated Design Self-reconfigurable, evolvable Artificial/Computational Intelligence CS/Math/Eng Autonomous Systems

6. 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.

7. How Evolvable Hardware? Analogue Intrinsic “hardware” Extrinsic “software” Digital

8. 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

9. COTS digital reconfigurable hardware PLA  FPGA  Virtex, VirtexII, VirtexPro (Xilinx)

10. COTS analogue reconfigurable hardware

11. Programmable Transistor Array Cell - FPTA2 Cell Schematic Chip Architecture

12. A new generation of hardware A third generation hardware in terms of flexibility and fault tolerance Flexibility, fault-tolerance Self-reconfigurable, evolvable Automated Design Artificial/Computational Intelligence Reconfigurable Fixed HW Generation 1st 3rd 2nd

13. Design to be evolved The design to be evolved could be a program, model of hardware or the hardware itself Program Model of Hardware Physical Hardware 0 WhileTooFarFromWall 1 Do2 2 MoveForward 3 Do2 4 WhileInCoridorRange 5 TurnAwayFromClosestWall 6 WhileInCoridorRange 7 Do2 8 TurnParallelToClosestWall 9 MoveForward SPICE Netlist HDL code vdd 20 0 DC 5.0V vin+ 6 0 DC 2.5v m1 1 1 20 20 PMOS L={L1} W={W1} m2 3 1 2 20 PMOS L={L2} W={W2} Evolutionary is Revolutionary!

14. Labs!

15. 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? Fundamental open questions