Introduction to Evolvable Hardware: A Practical Guide for Designing Self-Adaptive Systems provides a fundamental introduction for engineers, designers, and managers involved in the development of adaptive, high reliability systems. It also introduces the concepts of evolvable hardware (EHW) to new researchers in a structured way. With this practical book, you'll be able to quickly apply the techniques presented to existing design problems.

Table of Contents

PREFACE. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. ACRONYMS. 1 INTRODUCTION. 1.1 Characteristics of Evolvable Circuits and Systems. 1.2 Why Evolvable Hardware Is Good (and Bad!). 1.3 Technology. 1.4 Evolvable Hardware vs. Evolved Hardware. 1.5 Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Evolution. 1.6 Online vs. Offline Evolution. 1.7 Evolvable Hardware Applications. References. 2 FUNDAMENTALS OF EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION. 2.1 What Is an EA? 2.2 Components of an EA. 2.2.1 Representation. 2.2.2 Variation. 2.2.3 Evaluation. 2.2.4 Selection. 2.2.5 Population. 2.2.6 Termination Criteria. 2.3 Getting the EA to Work. 2.4 Which EA Is Best? References. 3 RECONFIGURABLE DIGITAL DEVICES. 3.1 Basic Architectures. 3.1.1 Programmable Logic Devices. 3.1.2 Field Programmable Gate Array. 3.2 Using Reconfigurable Hardware. 3.2.1 Design Phase. 3.2.2 Execution Phase. 3.3 Experimental Results. 3.4 Functional Overview of the POEtic Architecture. 3.4.1 Organic Subsystem. 3.4.2 Description of the Molecules. 3.4.3 Description of the Routing Layer. 3.4.4 Dynamic Routing. 3.5 Remarks. References. 4 RECONFIGURABLE ANALOG DEVICES. 4.1 Basic Architectures. 4.2 Transistor Arrays. 4.2.1 The NASA FTPA. 4.2.2 The Heidelberg FPTA. 4.3 Analog Arrays. 4.4 Remarks. References. 5 PUTTING EVOLVABLE HARDWARE TO USE. 5.1 Synthesis vs. Adaption. 5.2 Designing Self-Adaptive Systems. 5.2.1 Fault Tolerant Systems. 5.2.2 Real-Time Systems. 5.3 Creating Fault Tolerant Systems Using EHW. 5.4 Why Intrinsic Reconfiguration for Online Systems? 5.5 Quantifying Intrinsic Reconfiguration Time. 5.6 Putting Theory Into Practice. 5.6.1 Minimizing Risk With Anticipated Faults. 5.6.2 Minimizing Risk With Unanticipated Faults. 5.6.3 Suggested Practices. 5.7 Examples of EHW-Based Fault Recovery. 5.7.1 Population vs. Fitness-Based Designs. 5.7.2 EHW Compensators. 5.7.3 Robot Control. 5.7.4 The POEtic Project. 5.7.5 Embryo Development. 5.8 Remarks. References. 6 FUTURE WORK. 6.1 Circuit Synthesis Topics. 6.1.1 Digital Design. 6.1.2 Analog Design. 6.2 Circuit Adaption Topics. References. INDEX . ABOUT THE AUTHORS.

Author Biography

GARRISON W. GREENWOOD, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Portland State University. With nearly twenty years of industry experience, he is a Senior Member of the IEEE and the past chairman of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Technical Committee on Evolutionary Computation. He has been Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation since 2000. ANDREW M. TYRRELL, PhD, is Professor and Chair of Digital Electronics in the Department of Electronics at the University of York, UK. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, a Fellow of the IEE, Chairman of the IEEE Working Group on Evolvable Hardware, and Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation.