Evolving reversible circuits for the even-parity problem

Reversible computing basically means computation with less or not at all electrical power. Since the standard binary gates are not usually reversible we use the Fredkin gate in order to achieve reversibility. An algorithm for designing reversible digital circuits is described in this paper. The algorithm is based on Multi Expression Programming (MEP), a Genetic Programming variant with a linear representation of individuals. The case of digital circuits for the even-parity problem is investigated. Numerical experiments show that the MEP-based algorithm is able to easily design reversible digital circuits for up to the even-8-parity problem.