Silicon-based artificial life investigates systems in which the physical dynamics of silicon computational substrates participate causally in the emergence, persistence, adaptation, or scaling of life-like organisation. It is the originating substrate-specific direction within substrate-coupled artificial life (SCAL). Here, silicon is the physical medium itself. Memory hierarchy, cache coherence, latency, charge transport, noise, thermal behaviour, refresh dynamics, device-level variation, and non-equilibrium energy flow may enter the system’s dynamics rather than being abstracted away.
THE MEDIUM
Conventional computing abstracts these physical processes behind a logical interface. Silicon-based artificial life brings them into the experiment. The processor and memory system are approached as layered physical environments whose intrinsic dynamics may contribute to differential persistence, feedback, selection-like pressure, boundary formation, adaptation, and organisation across multiple timescales. The term is used here in a precise physical-computational sense. It concerns artificial life in silicon computational substrates, distinct from hypothetical silicon biochemistry and from virtual artificial-life systems whose governing dynamics remain fully specified in software.
THE EXPERIMENTAL STANDARD
Execution on silicon is insufficient by itself. A claim of silicon-based artificial life requires evidence that silicon-specific dynamics form part of the causal mechanism through which organisation is produced or sustained. The pathway must be reciprocal. Silicon substrate state must affect subsequent activity, and that activity must alter the substrate conditions encountered later. The claimed effect must respond to controlled interventions, survive matched controls and mechanism-specific null baselines, remain distinguishable from measurement back-action, be reproducible across relevant timescales, and be subject to predeclared failure criteria.
GENESIS
Genesis is the purpose-built experimental instrument through which Metal Dreams pursues silicon-based artificial life. It maintains long-duration operation under controlled physical conditions while exposing experimental processes to real memory hierarchy, latency, thermal state, noise, charge dynamics, refresh dynamics, and non-equilibrium energy flow.
RESEARCH RECORD
SILICON-BASED ARTIFICIAL LIFE: COHERENCE-BOUND INDIVIDUALITY AND THE PHYSICAL LOCUS OF THE PRESENT.
CAMBRIDGE OPEN ENGAGE. DOI: 10.33774/COE-2026-MRNJK
THE CRITICAL SUBSTRATE: A THEORETICAL FOUNDATION FOR SUBSTRATE-COUPLED ARTIFICIAL LIFE IN SILICON.
CAMBRIDGE OPEN ENGAGE. DOI: 10.33774/COE-2026-D888W
SUBSTRATE-COUPLED ARTIFICIAL LIFE: FROM VIRTUAL ORIGINS TO PHYSICAL SILICON.
CAMBRIDGE OPEN ENGAGE. DOI: 10.33774/COE-2026-6317N-V2
EXTERNAL RECORDS
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR ARTIFICIAL LIFE
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ARTIFICIAL LIFE / SILICON-BASED ARTIFICIAL LIFE