What is DHEP and why should I care?

[prokaryote]

Read all about it Here and Here and decide if you'd like to join in the fun and participate in a bleeding edge scientific distributed computing project.

[IronBits]

Nice FAQ!

[jaydee116]

After reading that FAQ I am still unclear what the point is of this project? How are the results used that are returned? Who uses them and for what purpose? Is there some company making a profit from the results?

[prokaryote]

Hi Jaydee116, and welcome to the forum!

I've pulled this from the FAQ regarding results:

Results Ownership
All evolved circuits are for research purposes only and will not be used for the commercial gain of any party and specially not by a big evil corporation. The best ones will be published in the "Better than Human" Hall of Fame and in future papers. Others will be handed out upon request.

Essentially, the results are open source if you will.

Many of the circuits are industrial circuits or those that are common knowledge and who uses them depends upon the area that they're designed for.

The point of this project is to come up with better ways to include BIST both online and offline. This is an important feature as it guarantees that a circuit is fully functional and responding without error (really nice to have if say one's life is dependent upon an electrical circuit to operate faultlessly (NASA, airlines, autos, medical equipment). However, the traditional method of incorporating BIST is to build a circuit twice (two copies) and compare the outputs of each. If the outputs are the same then the circuit passes.

The problem with this method is that it eats up valuable space either on a chip or on a circuit board and that costs money and resources to implement.

A possible solution is to allow a genetic algorithm come up with a new circuit design that still accomplishes the task and has both online and offline BIST using fewer gates than the traditional designs.

Many of the solutions that have been designed by genetic algorithms are completely unknown in how they work (at this time). Seeking to understand these more optimal solutions will give us insight into how to design better and more robust circuits. This can be especially important for critical electrical components and could allow even greater capabilities of our electronic devices.

hope that this helps,

A very good read can also be found Here

prok

[jaydee116]

Results Ownership
All evolved circuits are for research purposes only and will not be used for the commercial gain of any party and specially not by a big evil corporation. The best ones will be published in the "Better than Human" Hall of Fame and in future papers. Others will be handed out upon request.

NASA uses subcontractors to build their equipment, so are these contractors going to use this new tech from the results? Are the results going to be freely distributed for R&D for anyone and everyone to use to develop their products? Or just to select companies? The FAQ is pretty vague on this.

I understand now what the project is doing, I still don't fully understand what will happen with the results in the end. If I am going to spend countless $'s on electricity and computer parts I want to know how the results I done will be used in detail.

I like to know the project well before I run it. Sorry for the questions.

[michaelgarvie]

Results Ownership
All evolved circuits are for research purposes only and will not be used for the commercial gain of any party and specially not by a big evil corporation. The best ones will be published in the "Better than Human" Hall of Fame and in future papers. Others will be handed out upon request.

Jaydee, would changing the last bit to "handed out freely to anyone upon request",
make things more clear?

I assume that "for research purposes only" rules out the possibility that the circuits we're evolving are for a NASA subcontractor, or not?

We need a lawyer here!

Anyway, we are talking about cutting edge stuff here, the first time its being done. No engineer would dream of using technology at such an early stage of research. We are not even sure that this approach works for large circuits, which is why we started the project.

I also love the fact that a group of people on the internet can get togather and create stuff thats better than that made by companies, and then make it free to everyone!!

[jaydee116]

Originally posted by miguelgarvie
Jaydee, would changing the last bit to "handed out freely to anyone upon request",
make things more clear?

I assume that "for research purposes only" rules out the possibility that the circuits we're evolving are for a NASA subcontractor, or not?

We need a lawyer here!

Anyway, we are talking about cutting edge stuff here, the first time its being done. No engineer would dream of using technology at such an early stage of research. We are not even sure that this approach works for large circuits, which is why we started the project.

I also love the fact that a group of people on the internet can get togather and create stuff thats better than that made by companies, and then make it free to everyone!!

Not really. First is says:

will not be used for the commercial gain of any party and specially not by a big evil corporation.

And now you say given away freely to anyone who wants it? Well commercial companies will be asking for it for commercial gain no? I don't see any other way this projects results can be usefull otherwise. If this tech isn't allowed into industry then what's the point? Industry included companies which includes commercial gain, no?

See what I am getting at? I would like to know that all this (volunteered) time, money, and energy the people of the project put into have some kind of usefull result in the end. Even if it is a better microwave or wrist watch or space travel. I see no reason to run this project if the results are not going to be used for anything except for research put on the shelf with no end use.

So in other words will the results be used to make life better through new products or what? If so then the FAQ is wrong as the only way to make the results usefull is through commercialization and through industry to make a product for us to use. Weather it be an advanced space shuttle built by NASA or a better CPU by AMD/Intel.



"Cutting edge" means jack if it is never used for anything eh?

[michaelgarvie]

The aim of all this work is to build more efficient circuits; for cars, satellites, medical equipment, etc... In the long run someone will make a profit by using the technique being researched. It is unlikely that someone would make any money by using the circuits evolved by this project because they are pretty generic.
What matters here is that this is cutting edge research. What I mean is, the first plane ever built by the Wright brothers say was never meant to be commercialized, but it was essential for there eventual commercialization.
Miguel

[safemode]

something about the project bothers me. This is something that any computer and many electric engineers should be really interested in doing, yet we dont have that much activity. Maybe it's because the project is young but i'm not even sure of how young it is. I like the idea of self testing circuit evolution and all, i dont think many student engineeers appreciate it since it's hardly looked at until upper classes. Ok this has been said over and over before i'm sure so what's new about this post? Well besides recommending that there be a reference image of the conventionally accepted best (that is allowed to be posted) so we can side by side compare against the evolved circuits and of course the more "readable" diagrams of the evolved circuits not much is different from what's been said before. I would be fine if the boxes just had the word of the gate, like Xor or NAND or something. Then i can follow the diagram easy. Just whatever makes it more apparent that this project produces real tangible results in the short and long term, I think, will bring in more people to contribute. I tried getting slashdot to post something on it and hardocp.com but nothing ... maybe others can have some luck on other hardware sites to keep the project in public view. It's nice and all to be one of the top teams, but my two computer team (i'm pretty sure my two are the only ones that are always active) shouldn't be among teams with supposedly dozens of members. And my computers aren't even all that fast yet they are the second and third fastest. It should be getting dwarfed by people with quad athlon 64's that they built just to run the project. Steal some people from those stupid encryption cracking projects, what good really comes of that? So you prove that if you put a million computers at an encryption algorithm that you can crack it faster than a single computer would? duh. Ok, i'm ranting. But seriously, The naming of the boxes thing cant be all that complicated but i'm a c/c++ programmer, not much java experience and the conventional best picture/diagram to compare to is a really useful thing to look into.

[michaelgarvie]

If you can find a way of convincing more people to join the project you'd be very welcome to. Specially people who're wasting their CPU cycles crunching a number for a prize which is less than their PCs cost and a chance of winning comparable to the lottery!! If you could find a way of convincing them that would make a big difference. Any ideas?

As to the circuit diagrams. If you check the papers you'll see a few. Right now I've started a run using four input look-up tables which will come up with some weird four input gates for which there are no symbols. What I could do is try and fit the equation inside that ,square something like abc + ac'd' + cd. For two input gates and would be: ab, or would be a+b and xor would be ab' + a'b. What do you think?

[FoBoT]

i have tried setting up the client 3-4 times , all were failures
i didn't spend more than 10 minutes each time, but then , in my opinion, i shouldn't have to :bs:

if somebody tells me the secret to getting this to run without jumping through a bunch of hoops, i would at least like to get on the scoreboard

[michaelgarvie]

If you're using windows, did you make sure the java.policy file didn't download as java.policy.txt?

If not, what problem did you have?

[CaptainMooseInc]

Here's the commercial question answer quoted from NewScientist.com:

"Garvie admits that it is not yet ready for commercial use."

See, research won't just be thrown up onto the shelf.

[squizzar]

Sorry bout late reply but...

I'm a computer engineering student at Southampton uni. I'm only in my first year but I have been participating in this project (and also the United Devices Cancer research project) since I heard of it (them).

The point is that this provides a way of developing circuits that would overwise never have been thought of. Consider circuits randomly generated - every so often one would be created which matches the criteria. Even more rarely one would be created which is better than human design. The advantages of this should be obvious - the circuits designed are better than anything thought of by humans. This should benefit everyone. As far as I understand every pentium 4 processor (if not others) has some form of self test built in. You pay for that when you buy one, if it can be made cheaper/more effective surely that benefits everyone? The only difference between using a genetic algorithm and the random method (again as I see it) is that it is more intuitive, millions of useless circuits are never generated this way. At the end of the day that lump of squidgy stuff in your head is possibly the most advanced computing device known on this planet, it came about in (hopefully) the same way as these circuits will and that surely has to be beneficial.

On the point of availability of these results the whole thing about large commercial companies making gains from it is moot, the only people who can implement the results are companies who manufacture chips, and that isn't exactly a cheap operation to set up. However, it is not one company that benefits from these results, hence no monopoly. Prices (if any) for chips based on these designs will remain competitive because the designs are in the open - if they are significant then everyone who can will try to make them. To be honest I have no problem if a large company finds a way to implement them which will save lives (NASA, medical companies etc.).

Think of where self testing becomes vital in everyday life; cars will check to see if their lights work (let alone the ABS and other complex gizmos). These are benefits that can be reaped by all.

We reap the advantages of technological advancement every day without thinkng of them (you wouldn't be reading this otherwise) this is a chance to be part of one. I would be very happy to come up with a design for something far superior to what can be designed by the human mind because one day it might do me a favour....

Squiz

p.s. considering some of the advancement going on (cloning for example) this is significantly less dangerous

[jasong]

Originally posted by jaydee116
Not really. First is says:

And now you say given away freely to anyone who wants it? Well commercial companies will be asking for it for commercial gain no? I don't see any other way this projects results can be usefull otherwise. If this tech isn't allowed into industry then what's the point? Industry included companies which includes commercial gain, no?

See what I am getting at? I would like to know that all this (volunteered) time, money, and energy the people of the project put into have some kind of usefull result in the end. Even if it is a better microwave or wrist watch or space travel. I see no reason to run this project if the results are not going to be used for anything except for research put on the shelf with no end use.

Maybe someone should patent the circuits in the same way, from a public perception point of you, as the Christian Bible. I don't know if you've ever read it, but the difference between their legalese and the average book is like the difference between being given a swimming pool and swimming in the bathtub.

Note: This is not a religious comment. If you interpret it as such, you probably need to reread the post.

Edit: I feel I need to clarify. I'm not talking about scripture, I'm talking about copyright law. The Christian Bibles I've seen have had very, VERY permissive copyright laws. There, now I feel better.

[Zimbalist Palmer]

This is throughly intriguing, I shall continue my analysis.