Silicon-based artificial life is the first substrate-specific programme within substrate-coupled artificial life (SCAL). It investigates artificial systems in which silicon-specific physical dynamics participate causally in the emergence, persistence, adaptation, or scaling of life-like organisation. It is distinct from hypothetical silicon biochemistry and from virtual artificial-life systems in which substrate physics remains outside the causal account of the organisation.
THE MEDIUM
Conventional computing abstracts substrate dynamics behind a logical interface. Silicon-based artificial life brings those dynamics into the experiment. The conventional-silicon case brings together multiscale fluctuation from MOSFET charge-trap dynamics, cache-hierarchy latency asymmetry capable of supporting differential persistence under reciprocal coupling, and DRAM as a driven, nonlinear, fluctuating non-equilibrium medium. The distinctive opportunity lies in addressability. Conventional silicon is writable and traversable while the underlying physical system supplies latency, fluctuation, restoration, and dissipation. Reciprocal coupling places memory topology in contact with the physical conditions that maintain and perturb it.
THE EXPERIMENTAL STANDARD
Execution on silicon alone is insufficient. A silicon-based artificial-life claim requires evidence that silicon-specific physical dynamics form part of the causal pathway through which life-like organisation emerges, persists, adapts, or scales. Reciprocal coupling links substrate state to subsequent activity, which in turn alters the substrate conditions encountered later. Positive evidence requires a declared physical pathway through which controlled variation in substrate properties produces a reproducible change in an organisational observable. That change must remain distinguishable from a mechanism-specific null and lie outside the measured back-action budget, while matched controls exclude generic execution effects. Decision thresholds and failure criteria are declared in advance.
EXTERNAL RECORD
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR ARTIFICIAL LIFE
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ARTIFICIAL LIFE / SILICON-BASED ARTIFICIAL LIFE