Barricelli is the name of a specialized genetic algorithms computer designed and built by 10 students at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. It is a computer designed to quickly find good approximations to hard problems using a custom-made hardware-accelerated generic genetic algorithm solver.
Barricelli was built over a period of 12 weeks.
Precision work.
The naked Barricelli computer.
Close-up of a half-soldered board. The black towers to the left are passive cooling elements.
Wiring of the cabinet front-panel LEDs.
Ghetto-celli: the Barricelli case with development boards crammed inside as a backup, should the PCB fail.
Measuring the voltage over Barricelli's right eye.
Those eyes.
Barricelli is named after Nils Aall Barricelli, who was a Norwegian-Italian 20th century mathematician. Barricelli the mathematician was a pioneer in artificial life research, and he performed early computer-assisted experiments in the symbiogenesis and evolution fields. It is in recognition of Barricelli the mathematician's groundbreaking seminal work that Barricelli the computer takes its name. Read more about him on Wikipedia.
The paper describing the inner workings of the Barricelli, as well as detailing the work process, is available for download here.
The creators of the Barricelli computer are listed here, in alphabetical order:
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