Avida Overview

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An auto-adaptive genetic system, Avida serves as a platform for studies in digital evolution and artificial life. Avida runs populations of self-replicating digital organisms in a virtual world, exposing them to configurable mutation and environmental effects. Through selective pressures, these organisms change and evolve.

Primarily designed as a research platform, Avida serves a central role in many current and ongoing projects, including my own Master's research. Many features of Avida are geared towards facilitating the collection and analysis of data. For more information on active research with Avida, see the Digital Evolution Laboratory at Michigan State University.

A more detailed Introduction and Background for Avida is also available at the main Avida project site.

Current Development

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Avida is an ongoing project and is currently in active development. The Avida 2.x series is starting to undergo a massive refactorization and evolution in preparation for a shift to Avida 3.0. The entire architecture of Avida has been redesigned and will begin to gradually take shape.

Avida is also getting a new CPU model for digital organisms. In order to facilite my research, I am working on redesigning and implementing an enhanced version of the 4Stack CPU, known as the SMT CPU. This project will continue concurrently with Avida 2.x refactorization.

Obtaining Avida

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Avida can be obtained from quite a few sources. The most recent releases are available in the sidebar and a collection of past source code releases is available below. Obtain the most up to date Avida source code, development milestones, bug tickets, and other documentation directly from the SVN/Trac site at avida.devosoft.org.

Subversion Repository: https://avida.devosoft.org/svn/

Past Releases

Last updated: 2009-09-15