Improving the Evolvability of Digital Multipliers Using Embedded Cartesian Genetic Programming and Product Reduction

Abstract. Embedded Cartesian Genetic Programming (ECGP) is a form of Ge-netic Programming based on an acyclic directed graph representation. In this paper we investigate the use of ECGP together with a technique called Product Reduction (PR) to reduce the time required to evolve a digital multiplier. The results are compared with Cartesian Genetic Programming (CGP) with and without PR and show that ECGP improves evolvability and also that PR im-proves the performance of both techniques by up to eight times on the digital multiplier problems tested.