Production genetic algorithms for automated hardware design through an evolutionary process

Production genetic algorithms is proposed to enable grammar structure as well as hardware description language (HDL) programs to evolve, toward an automated hardware design system through an evolutionary process. Evolutionary computation and methods make it possible to design hardware that works in unknown and non-stationary environments without explicit design knowledge. In the proposed system, hardware specifications, which produce circuit behaviors, are automatically generated as HDL programs according to the grammar defined as in a rewriting system and then evolve through production genetic algorithms (PGAs), also proposed here. The PGAs introduce new chromosome representation and genetic operators to create self-genesis mechanisms in hardware design similar to living systems. An experimental result shows that through an evolutionary process based on the PGAs, a hardware specification program expands its circuit scale and as a result increases its functionality