In this paper we describe and compare several architectures of cellular automata to be used as hardware accelerators in the evaluation loop of a genetic algorithm. In addition, two dynamically reconfigurable cell interconnection networks are presented capable to realize nonregular lattices. Cellular automata are basic computational structures of interacting units which may expose self-organization and emergent behaviour. To investigate this behaviour subject to different cell interconnect patterns, an automated inspection flow is needed, including a very fast evaluation of single specimen. For that purpose, a flexible FPGA-based accelerator for cellular automata evaluation is used, which can be accessed transparently by a Java client running the genetic algorithm. Several architectures have been developed for that: a straightforward implementation of the cellular automaton, an area-reduced architecture, a dynamically reconfigurable interconnection network, which allows the interconnection of single cells under certain constraints and, finally, a dynamically reconfigurable interconnection network, which allows to connect cells arbitrarily.
['Peter Zipf', 'Oliver Soffke', 'André Schumacher', 'Radu Dogaru', 'Manfred Glesner']
Programmable and reconfigurable hardware architectures for the rapid prototyping of cellular automata