Biological organisms are among the most intricate structures known to man, exhibiting highly complex behavior through the massively parallel cooperation of numerous relatively simple elements, the cells. As the development of computing systems approaches levels of complexity such that their synthesis begins to push the limits of human intelligence, engineers are starting to seek inspiration in nature for the design of computing systems, both at the software and at the hardware levels. We present one such endeavor, notably an attempt to draw inspiration from biology in the design of a novel digital circuit: a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). This reconfigurable logic circuit will be endowed with two features motivated and guided by the behavior of biological systems: self-replication and self-repair .

In this short article we argue that von Neumann's quintessential message with respect to self-replicating automata is genotype + ribotype = phenotype. Self-replication of his universal constructor occurs in analogy to nature: The description (genotype) written on the input tape is translated via a ribosome (ribotype) so as to create the offspring universal constructor (phenotype).