Towards Robust Unconventional Evolved Circuits

If the $10\times 10$ region of the evolved tone-discriminator was translated to another region of the $64\times 64$ array, on the same chip, then performance was degraded: sometimes slightly, sometimes completely. Similar failings are found if the evolved configuration is used on a different nominally identical FPGA, though in both cases if evolution was allowed to continue, the population quickly adapted to the characteristics of the new silicon. Combined with the relatively narrow range of operating temperatures, this unportability restricts the circuit to very esoteric applications. To claim that an unconventional circuit is better (hypothesis H3), in a practical sense, it must have a more comprehensive operational envelope. We now present three research tools currently in use to bring this about, or at least to illuminate the potentials and limitations of the unconstrained approach.