ABSTRACT
A functional system acts upon itself and an environment in order to achieve internally specified objectives. The vast majority of information technology applications are very simple functionally. Functionally complex electronic systems are those which control large physical systems with no human intervention except as users of services provided. Experience with functionally complex electronic systems demonstrates the need for system architectures which make effective use of resources, allow functional changes without side effects, and permit identification and repair of failure conditions. Heuristic definition of functionality is possible, with clustering defining and detecting information combinations in system inputs and competition associating different sets of combinations with different behaviours. However, the requirement to maintain contexts is a severe constraint on both physical form and device algorithms. The cortex with columns and areas resembles the clustering subsystem of the recommendation architecture, and the thalamus, basal ganglia and cerebellum resemble the required competition subsystems.
