Embryonics: Artificial Cells Made of Artificial Molecules

Embryonics (embryonic electronics) is a research project which attempts to draw inspiration form the world of biology to design better digital computing machines, and notably massively parallel arrays of processors. In the course of the development of our project, we have realized that the use of programmable logic circuits (field-programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs) is, if not indispensable, at least extremely useful. This article describes the main concepts of Embryonics and some of the peculiar features of the FPGA we designed to efficiently implement our embryonic machines. More particularly, we overview the mechanisms taken from the world of biology and how we brought them in the world of silicon.