Prokaryotic Bio-Inspired System

Abstract

This paper presents a novel bio-inspired artificial system that is based on biological prokaryotic organisms and their artificial model, and proposes a new type of fault tolerant, self-healing architecture. The system comprises of a sea of bio-inspired cells, arranged in a rectangular array with a topology that is similar to that employed by FPGAs. A key feature of the array is its high level of fault tolerance, achieved with only minimal amount of hardware overhead. Inspired by similar biological processes, the technique is based on direct-correlated redundancy, where the redundant (stand-by) configuration bits, as extrinsic experience, are shared between blocks and cells of a colony in the artificial system. Bio-inspired array implementation is particularly advantageous in applications where the system is subject to extreme environmental conditions such as temperature, radiation, SEU (Single Event Upset) etc. and where fault tolerance is of particular importance.