The first hardware prototype of the Cell Matrix was made in 1986, using 2 micron cMOS in a 64-pin DIP to create a 3x4-cell matrix. You can find photos of that chip here, and excerpts from the original paper here.
8x8 Implementation - The Mod-88
The MOD-88 is a 64-cell matrix implemented on a Xilinx Spartan-3. This was presented at the 2005 NASA/DoD Conference on Evolvable Hardware (pictures here). The full development kit is available here: this includes schematics, board layouts, FPGA configuration details, and support software (but in a not-very-well-organized form).
Newer Verilog Version
Here is a newer Verilog-based version of the matrix. It's more portable than the schematic-based MOD-88 layout, but there are potentially some low-level timing glitches.