Pierre Marchal

Embryonics: a new methodology for designing field-programmable gate arrays with self-repair and self-replicating properties

The growth and the operation of all living beings are directed through 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 conception of very large scale integrated circuits endowed with properties usually associated with the living world: self-repair (cicatrization) and self-replication. We begin by showing that any logic system can be represented by an ordered binary decision diagram (OBDD), and then embedded into a fine-grained field-programmable gate array (FPGA) whose basic cell is a multiplexer with programmable connections. The cellular array thus obtained is perfectly homogeneous: the function of each cell is defined by a configuration (or gene) and all the genes in the array, each associated with a pair of coordinates, make up the blueprint (or genome) of the artificial organism. In the second part of the project, we add to the basic cell a memory and an interpreter to, respectively, store and decode the complete genome. The interpreter extracts from the genome the gene of a particular cell as a function of its position in the array (its coordinates) and thus determines the exact configuration of the relative multiplexer. The considerable redundancy introduced by the presence of a genome in each cell has significant advantages: self-replication (the automatic production of one or more copies of the original organism) and self-repair (the automatic repair of one or more faulty cells) become relatively simple operations. The multiplexer-based FPGA cell and the interpreter are finally embedded into an electronic module; an array of such modules make it possible to demonstrate self-repair and self-replication.

An On-Line Arithmetic Based FPGA for Low-Power Custom Computing

This paper describes the study of a new field programmable gate array architecture based on on-line arithmetic. This architecture, called Field Programmable On-line oPerators (FPOP), is dedicated to single chip implementation of numerical algorithms in low-power signal processing and digital control applications. FPOP is based on a reprogrammable array of on-line arithmetic operators. On-line arithmetic is a digit-serial arithmetic with most significant digits first using a redundant number system. The digit-level pipeline, the small number of communication wires between the operators and the small size of the arithmetic operators lead to high-performance parallel computations. In FPOP, the basic elements are arithmetic operators such as adders, subtracters, multipliers, dividers, square-rooters, sine or cosine operators.... An equation model is then sufficient to describe the mapping of the algorithm on the circuit. The digit-serial communication mode also significantly reduces the necessary programmable routing resources compared to standard FPGAs.

Embryonics: a new family of coarse-grained field-programmable gate array with self-repair and self-reproducing properties

The growth and the operation of all living beings are directed through the interpretation, in each of their cells, of a chemical program, the DNA. This program, called genome, is the blueprint of the organism and consists of a sequence of four discrete characters: A, C, G, and T. This process is the source of inspiration for the Embryonics (embryological electronics) project, whose final objective is the conception of very large scale integrated circuits endowed with properties usually associated with the living world: self-repair (cicatrization) and self-reproduction. Within this framework, we will present a new family of coarse-grained field-programmable gate arrays. Each cell is a binary decision machine whose microprogram represents the genome, and each part of the microprogram is a gene whose execution depends on the physical position of the cell in the array, i.e. on its coordinates. The considerable redundancy introduced by the presence of a genome in each cell has significant advantages: self-reproduction (the automatic production of one or more copies of the original organism) and self-repair (the automatic repair of one or more faulty cells) become relatively simple operations. Even if the described system seems exceedingly complex, we believe that computer architectures inspired by molecular biology will allow the development of new FPGAs endowed with quasi-biological properties extremely useful in environments where human intervention is necessarily limited (nuclear plants, space applications, etc.).

Embryonics: The Birth of Synthetic Life

A novel architecture descending from the work of von Neumann, has been developed. This architecture borrows its main principles from living systems. Like living beings, the organisms considered here are able to autonomously develop, maintain their functionality and reproduce. These genomic architectures are developed on reprogrammable hardware. They are not restricted to a given class of functions but accept any combinational and sequential function to be downloaded. These architectures are fault tolerant by design, so they can adapt to failures affecting the silicon. They autonomously evolve so as to maintain their functionality and hence self-reconfigure when needed.

John von Neumann: the founding father of artificial life

Aside from being known for his contributions to mathematics and physics, John von Neumann is considered one of the founding fathers of computer science and engineering. Not only did he do pioneering work on sequential computing systems, but he also carried out a major investigation of parallel architectures, leading to his work on cellular automata. His exceptional vision and daring, borrowing from biology the concept of genomic information even before the discovery of DNAs double helix, led him to propose the concept of self-reproducing automata.

Functional Organisms Growing on Silicon

This paper describes a novel architecture inspired from the multicellular organizations found in Nature. This architecture is tailored to let functional organisms (logical functions) grow on silicon. To this aim, the silicon surface is populated with an array of identical programmable cells, which may be configured by a bitstream. By analogy with the biological world, the concatenation of the bitstreams used to program the cells composing a given function is called the “genome” of that function. In addition to conventional BIST (Built-in Self-Test) structures addressing signal line faults, this new version tolerates failures affecting power supply. It also allows the growth of differentiated organisms on the same surface by including a code in the genome to distinguish them. As a testbed, we have developped an integrated circuit prototype, code name GenomIC. It contains only a single 4-cell structure, but prefigures which kind of structure can be massively integrated in very large circuits in order to manage complexity (multicellular organization), evolvability (genetic data manipulation) as well as fault tolerance.

CAFCA (Compact Accelerator For Cellular Automata): the metamorphosable machine

Partial differential equations have conventionally formed a basis for mathematical models of continuous systems. Cellular automata provide an alternative approach. The large scope of applications of cellular automata (in biology, physics, operational research, sociology, computer science and so on) will surely increase the need of such a tool. The basic constitutive cells are discrete and ideally suited to simulation by digital computers. Their property of only interacting in a local environment naturally leads to a new idea of processing: cellular processing. In fact, the simulation of cellular automata with mainframe computers, even with parallel multiprocessors, is always slowed down by the input/output bottleneck. This paper describes the architecture of a compact accelerator for cellular automata. This multi-expandable machine is based on a pipeline architecture which concurrently performs computations and displays results. The underlying principle is to spy on the display bus by grabbing the data flow pouring out to the display device and simultaneously to evaluate the state of each automaton in the network. The performance of the machine reaches the video rate: it computes and displays the state of the 1024/spl times/1024 16-bit automata 24 times per second. FPGAs play a key role in the architecture of the system.<<ETX>>

FPOP: field-programmable online operators

This paper describes a new digital reprogrammable architecture called Field Programmable On-line oPerators (FPOP). This architecture is a kind of FPGA dedicated to very low-power implementations of numerical algorithms in signal processing or digital control applications for embedded or portable systems. FPOP is based on a reprogrammable array of on-line arithmetic operators. On-line arithmetic is a digit-serial arithmetic with most significant digits first using a redundant number system. Because of the small size of the digit-serial operators and the small number of communication wires between the operators, single chip implementation of complex numerical algorithms can be achieved using on-line arithmetic. Furthermore, the digit-level pipeline and the small size of the arithmetic operators lead to high performance parallel computations. Compared to a standard FPGA, the basic cells in FPOP are arithmetic operators such as adders, subtracters, multipliers, dividers, square-rooters, sine or cosine operators. This granularity level allows very efficient power X delay implementations of most algorithms used in digital control and signal processing. The circuit also integrates some analog to digital and digital to analog converters.

Speeding-up Digital Ecologies Evolution Using a Hardware Emulator: Preliminary Results

Reference EPFL-ARTICLE-28557View record in Web of Science Record created on 2004-11-30, modified on 2016-08-08