Evolutionary Electronics
Conventional electronic design automation (EDA) is highly adanced, and the industry has developed around what EDA tools can do. This makes it easy to forget that they can't do everything. Evolutionary design and optimisation can explore some of the areas that normally must be neglected. Experiments have shown that evolution can `tinker' to employ the physics of the medium without the usual constraints needed for a more abstract rational design process. This could be particularly useful to design `building block' circuits for future nano-scale technology, where complex physics must be used rather than supressed. Even for more conventional microelectronics, evolutionary techniques show promise for low power and size (through unconventional structures and dynamics), robustness and fault-tolerance, testing, device-level design, and to augment existing EDA methods. For more information, see our Evolutionary Electronics Pages or email Adrian Thompson.
