cellular automaton

English

Noun

cellular automaton (plural cellular automata or cellular automatons)

A glider gun in the Game of Life cellular automaton.

1. (computing theory) An automaton consisting of cells arranged in a regular grid, in one or more dimensions. Each application of an associated rule creates a new generation, where the cells have a new configuration of values.
   • 1989 March 21, Dave Hiebeler, “Fast LIFE (was: Re: summing 9-cell neighborhoods)”, in comp.theory.cell-automata (Usenet):

     Or maybe just taking some precautions when setting up the division scheme for a particular cellular automaton might be good enough in other cases, depending on how dynamic and non-homogeneous the behavior over the grid will be.

   • 2003 October 8, Edwin Clark, “a puzzle related to artinian group”, in comp.theory.cell-automata‎^[1] (Usenet):

     For fixed n this is, of course, a cellular automaton. You can allow any positive integer states for each of the n cells. The transition rule is such that if a cell has state x >=2 then the state never exceeds x and if it has state x < 2 then it either stays the same or increase by 1 or 2.

   • 2012 July 3, Mike James, “A New Computational Universe - Fredkin's SALT CA”, in www.i-programmer.info‎^[2], retrieved 2012-10-25:

     The paper concludes:
     The Busy Boxes variant of the SALT family of reversible cellular automata has shown itself to possess an intriguing number of features that are worthy of further study and analysis. Physicist Gerard T'Hooft has written about the possibility that reversible CA's such as this one may help elucidate some aspects of physics in the quantum realm [5]. We believe that the study of emergent, qualitative, and statistically predictable behavior of these kinds of discrete, deterministic systems can indeed shed light on questions in physics, and may also help to clarify the deeper principles of entropy and the origin of complex, self-propagating systems such as those found in our biosphere

   • 2013 June 19, Aaron Ball, “Sierpinski's triangles generated from cellular automaton in Golly”, in comp.theory.cell-automata‎^[3] (Usenet):

     Hello, I have recently constructed a cellular automaton in Golly, with a starting population of roughly 899 million, that produces Shierpinski's triangles.

Synonyms

• CA

Derived terms

• block cellular automaton
• elementary cellular automaton
• Life-like cellular automaton
• partitioning cellular automaton

Translations

automaton

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 元胞自动机 (yuán bāo zì dòng jī)

• Finnish: soluautomaatti (fi)
• French: automate cellulaire (fr) m
• Russian: кле́точный автома́т m (klétočnyj avtomát)
• Serbo-Croatian: celularni automat m, stanični automat m

See also

• pushdown automaton
• Turing machine