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There's a (decade old+) paper on using genetic algorithms to design an FPGA for discriminating tones. The final design after hundreds of generations? The input
by lfowles 10y ago
There's a (decade old+) paper on using genetic algorithms to design an FPGA for discriminating tones. The final design after hundreds of generations? The input wasn't connected to the output! It relied on physical details and even iirc stopped working as the FPGA temperature rose.
- rtkwe 10y agoI believe this is what you're talking about? https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/ https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/ Even funnier was that it wouldn't work on another FPGA. It was exploiting weird defects in that particular FPGA.
- lfowles 10y agoYes, that's the experiment! Here's a more thorough article: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.50.9691&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.50....
- milesvp 10y agoI've seen a similar paper quoted in one of the books on my shelf talking about a really long chain of logic gates that evolved in an FPGA for some physically situated agent (aka, robot). The chain couldn't be doing anything from a discrete logic point of view, so they got rid of it to "improve the final design". But once they did, the robot couldn't perform it's task anymore. Turned out the chain was being used as an antenna and was pumping RF information into the chip in order to help accomplish it's task. Evolution is a strange, strange thing.