Sexy new distcomp project aims to evolve self-correcting hardware designs using genetic algorithms. Welcome to the non-human-readable future! We should build GAs into every compiler, just to optimize code in a way that makes it really futuristic.
Host an island with a population of circuits struggling for survival in a hostile online world. During your PCs idle time individuals from this population will evolve through a process of survival of the meekest into circuits with Built-In Self-Test (BIST) and will compete with those hosted on other PCs by migrating to and from them. These circuits will not obey conventional design rules since evolution finds efficient solutions no matter how complex to understand they are – just like it did with our own bodies and brains. You can join into this cluster in one minute by installing the client found at here. Check up on how your population is doing compared to others here and name your best creations if they enter the “better than human” hall of fame.
Self-Diagnosing Hardware is capable of detecting deviations from its normal behaviour due to faults. Self-Diagnosis is important especially in mission critical systems exposed to radiation. Built-In Self-Test (BIST) is widely used yet commonly requires more than 100% overhead or off-line testing. However the latter is unsuitable in mission critical systems such as a nuclear power station controller where we must diagnose failure immediately. In the last 40 years of BIST research, spawned by the NASA aerospace program, conventional design has not come up with a significant improvement to the voting system as an on-line BIST solution. A voting system with two copies of the module being diagnosed is capable of detecting faults by comparing the outputs of the copies. This requires 100% redundancy for the extra module plus more logic for the voter.
(Thanks, Miguel!)