Evolvable Electronics

Prabhas Chongstitvatana
Chulalongkorn university, Thailand

Keynote lecture at The 23rd International Technical Conference on Circuits/Systems, Computers and Communications (ITC-CSCC 2008), July 6-9, 2008, Shimonoseki, Japan.

Abstract

Presently there are many technologies available that make electronic devices become far more flexible than before. The current "programmable" or "reconfigurable" devices are available both for digital and analog domain. These devices allow many new possibilities in terms of making electronic circuits change with time. With this "time-varying" circuit concept, many novel applications emerge. It is possible to make an electronic system that "optimise" itself while operating. For example, it is possible to time-multiplexing the use of resources such that it minimises the energy or it maximises the performance. In this talk, I will illustrate the marriage between reconfigurable electronics and evolutionary algorithms. The combination of the two allows on-line and continuous reconfiguration of electronic circuits. An evolutionary algorithm can be used to adapt parameters of a circuit. It also can be used to change the topology of the circuit. The outline of my talk includes: the introduction to reconfigurable electronics, a brief explanation of evolutionary algorithms, the use of evolutionary algorithm in electronic design and many examples from the current research in the field. (evolvable electronics = reconfigurable electronics + evolutionary algorithms)

Biography

Prabhas Chongstitvatana earned Bachelor of Engineering (EE) from Kasetsart University, Thailand in 1980 and Ph.D. from the department of artificial intelligence, Edinburgh University, UK, in 1992.  Presently, he is a full professor with the department of computer engineering, Chulalongkorn University.  His research interests included robotics, evolutionary computation and computer architecture.  The current work involves bioinformatics and grid computing where he is actively promote the collaboration to create Thai national grid for scientific computing.  He is the member of Thailand Engineering Institute, Thai Academy of Science and Technology, Thai Robotics Society, Thai Embedded System Association and ECTI Association of Thailand.

Presentation  ( pdf  )