Multiple von Neumann computers: an evolutionary approach to functional emergence

A novel system composed of multiple von Neumann computers and an appropriate problem environment is proposed and simulated. Each computer has a memory to store the machine instruction program, and when a program is executed, a series of machine codes in the memory is sequentially decoded, leading to register operations in the central processing unit (CPU). By means of these operations, the computer not only can handle its generally used registers but also can read and write the environmental database. Simulation is driven by genetic algorithms (GAs) performed on the population of program memories. Mutation and crossover create program diversity in the memory, and selection facilitates the reproduction of appropriate programs. Through these evolutionary operations, advantageous combinations of machine codes are created and fixed in the population one by one, and the higher function, which enables the computer to calculate an appropriate number from the environment, finally emerges in the program memory. In the latter half of the article, the performance of GAs on this system is studied. Under different sets of parameters, the evolutionary speed, which is determined by the time until the domination of the final program, is examined and the conditions for faster evolution are clarified. At an intermediate mutation rate and at an intermediate population size, crossover helps create novel advantageous sets of machine codes and evidently accelerates optimization by GAs.