Source:
FPGA'98 Sixth International Symposium on Field Programmable Gate Arrays, ACM Press, Doubletree Hotel, Monterey, California, USA, p.209--219 (1998)
URL:
http://www.genetic-programming.com/jkpdf/fpga1998.pdf
Keywords:
genetic algorithms;
genetic programming
Abstract:
This paper describes how the massive parallelism of
the rapidly reconfigurable Xilinx XC6216 FPGA (in
conjunction with Virtual Computing's H.O.T. Works
board) can be exploited to accelerate the
time-consuming fitness measurement task of genetic
algorithms and genetic programming. This acceleration
is accomplished by embodying each individual of the
evolving population into hardware in order to perform
the fitness measurement task. A 16-step sorting network
for seven items was evolved that has two fewer steps
than the sorting network described in the 1962 O'Connor
and Nelson patent on sorting networks (and the same
number of steps as a 7-sorter that was devised by Floyd
and Knuth subsequent to the patent and that is now
known to be minimal). Other minimal sorters have been
evolved.