Presentation Outline

1
Presentation Outline

• Background
• Self-Replication
• Self-Repair
• Conclusion

2
Introduction

• Embryonics biological inspiration
• Bio-inspired hardware
• Field-Programmable Gate Arrays
• BioWall

• Background
• Self-Replication
• Self-Repair
• Conclusion

3
The BioWall
How does it work?
4
The Artificial Organism
What is an artificial organism?
An application-specific computing system.
5
The Artificial Organism
What is an artificial organism?
An application-specific parallel computing
system, made up of a two-dimensional array of
artificial cells.
Where each cell contains the entire genetic
material of the organism.
6
The Artificial Cell
What is an artificial cell?
A small (but universal) processor
containing
a memory for the genome program
an interpreter and a coordinate system
a functional unit and a routing unit.
7
Bio-Inspired Hardware
What is the size of a cell?
It depends on the application!!
Solution A novel FPGA architecture!
8
The Artificial Cell
What is an artificial cell?
A small (but universal) configurable processor ,
made up of a two-dimensional array of artificial
molecules.
9
The Artificial Molecule
What is an artificial molecule?
An FPGA element of the MuxTree family
containing
a programmable function
a set of fixed and programmable connections
a configuration register.
10
The 4 Levels of Embryonics
Population level (? organisms) Organism level (?
cells) Cell level (? molecules) Molecule
level (? transistors FPGA)
11
Defining the Needs
What do we need?
To develop a novel, bio-inspired FPGA architecture
capable of
Supporting cellular-level self-replication.
Storing the (large) genome in each cell.
Supporting cellular-level self-repair.
Tolerating minor faults at the molecular level.
12
Self-Replication

• Von Neumanns universal constructor
• Langtons loop
• Our novel self-replicating loop
• The membrane builder

• Background
• Self-Replication
• Self-Repair
• Conclusion

13
Von Neumanns Constructor
Von Neumanns Universal Constructor (Uconst) can
build a copy of itself (Uconst) and of any
finite machine (Ucomp), given the description of
both D(UconstUcomp).
DAUGHTER CELL
MOTHER CELL
GENOME
14
Von Neumann to Embryonics
UComp
UConst
Universal Computation
Universal Construction
UTM on MicTree
MicTree on MuxTree
15
Universal Construction
How do we go from an FPGA
to a cellular array?
Knowing that the structure of the cells varies
with each application!
CELLULAR SELF-REPLICATION
16
Langtons Loop
17
Propagation of Langtons Loop
18
Our Novel Loop
19
The Loops Propagation
20
The LSL Loop
21
The Membrane Builder
22
The Membrane in MuxTree
CONFIGURATION BITSTREAM
23
The Membrane in MuxTree
24
The MUXTREE Molecule
Every cell must store the (large) genome program.
However, the only memory elements in the MUXTREE
molecule are a single D-type flip-flop and the
configuration register CREG.
25
The Genome Memory
A "conventional" addressable memory is not suited
to our architecture (decoding logic too large,
incompatible storage).
However, the access pattern of the genome program
allows us to use a different kind of memory,
which we will call cyclic memory.
Performance-wise, it is not efficient (jumps) but
the storage structure is perfectly suited to a
shift-register implementation.
26
Genome Memory Implementation
Our configuration register CREG is a shift
register.
And all the connections required for a cyclic
memory are already in place for configuration
and/or repair.
27
The BioWall
28
Self-Repair

• Background
• Self-Replication
• Self-Repair
• Conclusion

• MuxTree
• Self-test
• Self-repair
• MuxTree and MicTree

29
Cellular Self-Repair
How do we implement cellular self-repair?
We need a hardware mechanism to detect the faults
and to generate a KILL signal.
HARDWARE MOLECULAR LAYER
30
MuxTree
31
MuxTree Function
32
MuxTree Connections
33
MuxTree Register
34
Why does my system crash?

• Software bugs
• Programming errors, communication errors
• Design errors
• Bad design (e.g., Pentium bug), layout errors
• Fabrication defects
• Process deficiencies, mask defects
• Lifetime faults
• Radiation-induced faults, electron migration, age

35
Fault Modeling

• Actual faults
• Shorts
• Opens
• Bridging
• Memory flips
• Fault models
• Stuck-at-1
• Stuck-at-0

36
Fault Detection

• Test at fabrication
• Test patterns
• Built-In Self-Test

37
Fault Tolerance

• Triplication
• Reconfiguration
• Online self-repair

38
Function Self-Test
39
Connections Self-Test
40
Register Self-Test
41
Register Faults Stuck-at-0
42
Register Faults Stuck-at-1
43
Self-Repair
44
Reconfiguration
45
Rerouting
46
The Spare Columns
47
The New Membrane Builder
The spare columns should be contained within a
block (cell).
48
The Membrane in MuxTree
CONFIGURATION BITSTREAM
49
The KILL Signal
50
MuxTree and MicTree
51
The BioWall
52
Conclusion

• Background
• Self-Replication
• Self-Repair
• Conclusion

• Hierarchical Structure
• The BioWall and Beyond

53
The 3 Layers
54
The BioWall
55
The Future of Embryonics (1)
Self-directed replication
56
The Future of Embryonics (2)
Convergence of the POE axes
57
The End

• Background
• Self-Replication
• Self-Repair
• Conclusion

Time for some questions...