Evolvable systems in hardware design: Taxonomy, survey and applications

This article proposes a taxonomy, presents a survey and describes a set of applications on Evolvable Hardware Systems (EHW). The taxonomy is based on the following properties: Hardware Evaluation Process, Evolutionary Approach, Target Application Area and Evolving Platform. Recent reported applications on EHW are also reviewed according to the proposed taxonomy. Additionally, a set of digital design applications, developed by the authors are presented. The applications consist in evolving basic digital devices, and the main objective is to evaluate the performance of an EHW system in terms of chromosome representation and evaluation.