: The evolved circuit lacked a clock signal and utilized gates that had no apparent logical connection to the rest of the system.

: It functioned by exploiting subtle physical properties of the hardware (like propagation delays or temperature sensitivity) that traditional design methodologies usually abstract away or forbid. Significance of the Work

Thompson's most famous experiment involved evolving a using a Xilinx FPGA:

: Experiments are conducted directly on physical hardware, allowing the evolution to exploit the raw physics of the silicon. Seminal Experiments & Key Findings