Biologically inspired reconfigurable hardware for dependable applications

A novel paradigm for designing fault-tolerant processor arrays inspired by biological processes is presented. These ideas can be applied to the design of fault-tolerant FPGAs, or for improvement of yield in the fabrication of WSI systems. Embryonics is a nascent discipline, therefore much research must be done to investigate in depth the fault-tolerant properties of these systems. Our approach is coherent with a recent uproar about the application of biological concepts to the solution of engineering problems, e.g., evolutionary computing, evolvable hardware, and genetic algorithms.