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Evolvable Systems
Course Advisor:
 Lucian Prodan
Web Page:
 www.acsa.upt.ro
 Teaching
 Graduate Courses
“Politehnica” University of Timisoara
Summer Semester 2007
What is ACSA ??
Why bother ??
Here are some thoughts…

Computers:
• Fine exponents of the present days’ technological
wave
• Solid and trusted performance, indispensable support
in many fields
• Moore’s law on computer performance still holding
(barely?)

Two major problems (according to Gigascale)
• Of the small: caused by device shrinking – dominant
thus far, industry’s main focus and investment
• Of the large: enormity of design verification and
manufacturing-test tasks – now a limitation for
industrial progress
Should we care ??
Here are some more thoughts…

Physical limits of current, conventional technologies
approaching fast (also financial limits!)
• Intel’s 90nm Prescott chip already close to the thermal
wall
• need to individually place atoms inside chips throughout
2010's

Moore’s law breakdown forecasted around 2018
(source: Intel)

ITRS – two near- and longer-term challenges:
• sustaining the 17% annual increase in performance
• developing beyond CMOS materials and applications
Who says this ??
Are there any alternatives ??
Emerging
Technologies and
CMOS
•
•
•
•
Speed
Size
Cost
Switching
Energy
Source: ITRS
report
– 2004 update
What about this course ??

New computing architectures:
• Biologically-inspired computing
– First part of the semester
• Molecular and DNA computing
• Nanoelectronics, …

New computing paradigms:
• Quantum computing
– Second part of the semester
• Reversible computing
• Adiabatic computing, …
Bioinspired Computing: Why ??

Tradition: engineering and science have
developed along separate tracks
• Natural scientist – a detective: seeking to
analyze existing processes, to explain their
operation, to model them, and to predict their
future behavior
• Engineer – a builder: tries to create artificial
systems (bridges, cars, electronic devices)
based on a set of specifications (a
description) and a set of primitives
(elementary components such as bricks,
beams, wires, motors, and transistors)
Bioinspired Computing: Why ?? (2)

Present days:
• scientists use tools created by engineers
• engineers allured by certain natural processes

Living organisms – complex systems
exhibiting a range of desirable characteristics
difficult to realize using traditional engineering
methodologies
• evolution
• adaptation
• fault tolerance
Living organisms ??
Living systems characterized by a
genetic program (the genome), that
guides their development, their
functioning, and their death
 Considering life on Earth since its very
beginning, three levels of organization
distinguished:

• phylogeny
• ontogeny
• epigenesis
Phylogeny

First level of organization considered for living
systems

Temporal evolution of the genetic program
(the genome) concerned

Replication based on genome multiplying –
low error rate at individual level

Genetic mechanisms fundamentally
nondeterministic –> genetic diversity ->
survavibility
Ontogeny

Second level of organization considered
for multicellular living systems

Temporal evolution of one individual

Successive cellular division of the
zygote -> cellular differentiation

Processes essentially deterministic –>
wrong genetic sequence ->
notable/lethal malformations
Epigenesis

Third level of organization considered for
living systems

Ontogenetic information limited -> another
process emerge to integrate knowledge

Example: human brain 1010 neurons, 1014
connections -> too large to be encoded by the
genome

Learning systems
– Nervous
– Endocrine
– Immune
POE Model: How Does Affect US,
Computer Engineers ?? -- Phylogeny

Artificial evolution: genetic algorithms, evolution strategies,
evolutionary programming, and genetic programming

Large scale programmable circuits: configure function by
programming -> FPGAs - three distinct levels of configuration
for an FPGA:
– logic
– cell interconnection
– inputs and outputs

Evolvable hardware: an
evolutionary approach to
digital design
POE Model: How Does Affect US,
Computer Engineers ?? -- Ontogeny

Growth, construction:
– self-test and self-repair
– self-replication
– Embryonics
POE Model: How Does Affect US,
Computer Engineers ?? -- Epigenesis

Nervous system:
– Traditionally the most investigated
– Artificial Neural Networks

Immune system:
– software fault detection
– Controllers for mobile robots

Endocrine system
– hormones