The paper presents a Field Programmable Transistor Array (FPTA), developed as an experimental platform for implementing flexible, reconfigurable analog computing. Parasitic effects of imperfect switches interconnecting transistors deteriorate the performance of conventional designs when mapped to the FPTA. However, working design solutions can be obtained through a search procedure guided by evolutionary algorithms. An example of evolutionary design is illustrated using a stand-alone board-level evolvable system (SABLES) in which the evolutionary algorithm is implemented with a DSP. SABLES can automatically configure the FPTA in tens to hundreds of seconds, time in which evaluates ~100,000 circuit candidate solutions. The paper details several examples of evolutionary synthesis of analog circuits on the FPTA. Evolved circuits include rectifier circuits, reconfigurable analog filters and reconfigurable fuzzy logic circuits. The paper also discusses implications of reconfigurable analog computing.
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Last Revised: May 13, 2002
Digital Engineering Institute
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