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Design of single‐electron systems through artificial evolution
Author(s) -
Thompson Adrian,
Wasshuber Christoph
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
international journal of circuit theory and applications
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.364
H-Index - 52
eISSN - 1097-007X
pISSN - 0098-9886
DOI - 10.1002/1097-007x(200011/12)28:6<585::aid-cta129>3.0.co;2-3
Subject(s) - ideal (ethics) , electronic circuit , exploit , simple (philosophy) , darwinism , work (physics) , computer science , electron , thermal , circuit design , evolutionary algorithm , statistical physics , physics , artificial intelligence , quantum mechanics , embedded system , biology , thermodynamics , philosophy , computer security , epistemology , genetics
We show how evolutionary methods can help in the design of single‐electronic circuits with an example of evolving a simple NOR gate. Evolutionary algorithms, capturing the bare essentials of Darwinian evolution, work differently from conventional design methods, and have the potential to explore new territory. Our preliminary evolved circuit is far from an ideal NOR gate, but has interesting properties. It was evolved to work at a temperature of 340 mK, and its performance deteriorates if the temperature is lowered, as well as if it is increased. This is contrary to the usual behaviour of single‐electronic circuits, which generally improve with decreasing temperature. We hypothesize that the circuit exploits or relies upon the simulated effects of the particular thermal energies of the electrons at around 340 mK. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.