Pierre-André Mudry

Self-replicating hardware for reliability: The embryonics project

The multicellular structure of biological organisms and the interpretation in each of their cells of a chemical program (the DNA string or genome) is the source of inspiration for the Embryonics (embryonic electronics) project, whose final objective is the design of highly robust integrated circuits, endowed with properties usually associated with the living world: self-repair and self-replication. In this article, we provide an overview of our latest research in the domain of the self-replication of processing elements within a programmable logic substrate, a key prerequisite for achieving system-level fault tolerance in our bio-inspired approach.

Roombots—Towards decentralized reconfiguration with self-reconfiguring modular robotic metamodules

This paper presents our work towards a decentralized reconfiguration strategy for self-reconfiguring modular robots, assembling furniture-like structures from Roombots (RB) metamodules. We explore how reconfiguration by locomotion from a configuration A to a configuration B can be controlled in a distributed fashion. This is done using Roombots metamodules—two Roombots modules connected serially—that use broadcast signals, lookup tables of their movement space, assumptions about their neighborhood, and connections to a structured surface to collectively build desired structures without the need of a centralized planner.

MOVE processors that self-replicate and differentiate

This article describes an implementation of a basic multi-processor system that exhibits replication and differentiation abilities on the POEtic tissue, a programmable hardware designed for bio-inspired applications [1,2]. As for a living organism, whose existence starts with only one cell that first divides, our system begins with only one totipotent processor, able to implement any of the cells required by the final organism, which can also fully replicate itself, using the functionalities of the POEtic substrate. Then, analogously to the cells in a developing organism, our just replicated totipotent processors differentiate in order to execute their specific part of the complete organism functionality. In particular, we will present a working realization using MOVE processors whose instructions define the flow of data rather than the operations to be executed [3]. It starts with one basic MOVE processor that first replicates itself three times; the four resulting processors then differentiate and connect together to implement a multi-processor modulus-60 counter.

A dynamically constrained genetic algorithm for hardware-software partitioning

In this article, we describe the application of an enhanced genetic algorithm to the problem of hardware-software codesign. Starting from a source code written in a high level language our algorithm determines, using a dynamically-weighted fitness function, the most interesting code parts of the program to be implemented in hardware, given a limited amount of resources, in order to achieve the greatest overall execution speedup. The novelty of our approach resides in the tremendous reduction of the search space obtained by specific optimizations passes that are conducted on each generation. Moreover, by considering different granularities during the evolution process, very fast and effective convergence (in the order of a few seconds) can thus be attained. The partitioning obtained can then be used to build the different functional units of a processor well suited for a large customization, thanks to its architecture that uses only one instruction, Move.

Hardware/Software Coevolution of Genome Programs and Cellular Processors

The application of evolutionary techniques to the design of custom processing elements bears a strong relation to the natural process that led to the co-evolution of cells and genomes in biological organisms. As such, it is an interesting avenue for an effective application of evolutionary approaches in the domain of hardware design. The architecture of conventional non-configurable processors, however, is ill-adapted to this kind of approach, as evolution can operate exclusively on the software (the genome) and not on the hardware that executes it, leading to scalability issues that seem very difficult to overcome. Building on a family of configurable processors we developed in the past years, in this article we introduce a design methodology that allows the architecture of the processor to co-evolve together with the code to be executed

A novel platform for complex bio-inspired architectures

Cellular architectures represent the natural approach to apply bio-inspired mechanisms to the world of digital hardware. To derive any useful property (in terms of computation) from these mechanisms, however, it is necessary to examine systems that are large enough to pose problems for conventional design methodologies. Moreover, implementing these mechanisms in actual hardware is the only way to ensure that they are efficient from a computational standpoint. The realization of this kind of systems, however, requires resources that are both quantitatively and qualitatively different from conventional, off-the-shelf platforms. In this article, we describe a novel hardware platform aimed at the realization of cellular architectures. The system is built hierarchically from a very simple computing unit, called ECell. Several of these units can then be connected, using a high-speed serial communication protocol, to a more complex structure called the EStack. Consisting of four different kinds of interconnected boards (computational, routing, power supply, and display), these stacks can then be joined together to form an arbitrarily large parallel network of programmable circuits

A Hardware-Software Design Framework for Distributed Cellular Computing

In this article, we describe a novel hardware-software design framework for prototyping cellular architectures in hardware. Based on an extensible platform of about 200 FPGAs, configured as a networked structure of processors, the hardware part of this computing framework is backed by an extensible library of software components that provides primitives for efficient inter-processor communication and distributed computation. This dual software---hardware approach allows a very quick exploration of different ways to solve computational problems using bio-inspired techniques. To demonstrate the validity of the method, we present an example of how a traditional parallel system such as a cellular automaton can be modeled and run with this perspective. In addition, we also show that the flexibility of our approach allows not only cellular automata but any computation to be easily implemented on a cellular substrate.

Self-replication for reliability: bio-inspired hardware and the embryonics project

The growth and operation of all living beings are directed by the interpretation, in each of their cells, of a chemical program, the DNA string or genome. This process is the source of inspiration for the Embryonics (embryonic electronics) project, whose final objective is the design of highly robust integrated circuits, endowed with properties usually associated with the living world: self-repair (cicatrization) and self-replication. The Embryonics architecture is based on four hierarchical levels of organization: 1) the basic primitive of our system is the molecule, a multiplexer-based element of a novel programmable circuit; 2) a finite set of molecules makes up a cell, essentially a small processor with an associated memory; 3) a finite set of cells makes up an organism, an application-specific multiprocessor system; 4) the organism can itself replicate, giving rise to a population of identical organisms. In this paper, we provide an overview of our latest research in the domain of the self-replication of processing elements within a programmable logic substrate, a key prerequisite for achieving system-level fault tolerance in our bio-inspired approach.