Biology meets electronics: The path to a bio-inspired FPGA

Embryonics (embryonic electronics) is a research project that attempts to draw inspiration form the world of biology to design better digital computing machines, and notably massively parallel arrays of processors. In the course of the development of our project, we have realized that the use of programmable logic circuits (field-programmable gate arrays.. or FPGAs) is, if not indispensable, at least extremely useful. This article describes some of the peculiar features of the FPGA we designed to efficiently implement our embryonic machines. More particularly, we discuss the issues of memory storage and of self-repair, critical concerns for the implementation of our bio-inspired machines.