Evolvable hardware chips and their applications

The paper describes Evolvable Hardware (EHW) chips and their industrial applications. EHW refers to hardware devices that can adjust their circuit structure to adapt to varying environments. Unlike traditional hardware, EHW is capable of autonomously changing its functionality whilst operating in a real environment, and thus represents a major new approach to hardware design and development. A number of the applications of EHW currently under development at the Electrotechnical Laboratory are introduced, and in particular, a data compression EHW chip for electrophotographic printers, which has achieved compression ratios twice those of the international standard methods, is described in some detail