if you get CPUs to exchange their designs in quasi-sexual activities and let them multiply and evolve on their own, maybe. right now the competitive pressure is on their designers.

My understanding is that for at least three years now chip feature size has been on a scale where the design software has to evolve (as in: their algorithm is simulated evolution) physical solutions to the logic-level designs to avoid unintentional self interaction, both quantum tunnelling and classical e.g. capacitance. Humans can’t do that for multi-billion transistor chips.

First off, that sounds pretty hot. :) Second, if there is reproductive variation and selection, I think it's evolution. We take our old CPU design and make a new variation, that's the reproductive variation part. We also have a market select for which designs survive via purchases or lack thereof, the selection part. It doesn't matter to me so much if a life form that hosts it, a computer hosts it or a human mind.

There's your ubiquitous singularity lurking somewhere near. Symbiosis between CPU and a Human advancing CPU's evolution. Not exactly what we were promised!