2,126 research outputs found
Cellular automata and self-organized criticality
Cellular automata provide a fascinating class of dynamical systems capable of
diverse complex behavior. These include simplified models for many phenomena
seen in nature. Among other things, they provide insight into self-organized
criticality, wherein dissipative systems naturally drive themselves to a
critical state with important phenomena occurring over a wide range of length
and time scales.Comment: 23 pages, 12 figures (most in color); uses sprocl.tex; chapter
submitted for "Some new directions in science on computers," G. Bhanot, S.
Chen, and P. Seiden, ed
Growth and Decay in Life-Like Cellular Automata
We propose a four-way classification of two-dimensional semi-totalistic
cellular automata that is different than Wolfram's, based on two questions with
yes-or-no answers: do there exist patterns that eventually escape any finite
bounding box placed around them? And do there exist patterns that die out
completely? If both of these conditions are true, then a cellular automaton
rule is likely to support spaceships, small patterns that move and that form
the building blocks of many of the more complex patterns that are known for
Life. If one or both of these conditions is not true, then there may still be
phenomena of interest supported by the given cellular automaton rule, but we
will have to look harder for them. Although our classification is very crude,
we argue that it is more objective than Wolfram's (due to the greater ease of
determining a rigorous answer to these questions), more predictive (as we can
classify large groups of rules without observing them individually), and more
accurate in focusing attention on rules likely to support patterns with complex
behavior. We support these assertions by surveying a number of known cellular
automaton rules.Comment: 30 pages, 23 figure
Boolean derivatives and computation of cellular automata
The derivatives of a Boolean function are defined up to any order. The Taylor
and MacLaurin expansions of a Boolean function are thus obtained. The last
corresponds to the ring sum expansion (RSE) of a Boolean function, and is a
more compact form than the usual canonical disjunctive form. For totalistic
functions the RSE allows the saving of a large number of Boolean operations.
The algorithm has natural applications to the simulations of cellular automata
using the multi site coding technique. Several already published algorithms are
analized, and expressions with fewer terms are generally found.Comment: 15 page
Fitness landscape of the cellular automata majority problem: View from the Olympus
In this paper we study cellular automata (CAs) that perform the computational
Majority task. This task is a good example of what the phenomenon of emergence
in complex systems is. We take an interest in the reasons that make this
particular fitness landscape a difficult one. The first goal is to study the
landscape as such, and thus it is ideally independent from the actual
heuristics used to search the space. However, a second goal is to understand
the features a good search technique for this particular problem space should
possess. We statistically quantify in various ways the degree of difficulty of
searching this landscape. Due to neutrality, investigations based on sampling
techniques on the whole landscape are difficult to conduct. So, we go exploring
the landscape from the top. Although it has been proved that no CA can perform
the task perfectly, several efficient CAs for this task have been found.
Exploiting similarities between these CAs and symmetries in the landscape, we
define the Olympus landscape which is regarded as the ''heavenly home'' of the
best local optima known (blok). Then we measure several properties of this
subspace. Although it is easier to find relevant CAs in this subspace than in
the overall landscape, there are structural reasons that prevent a searcher
from finding overfitted CAs in the Olympus. Finally, we study dynamics and
performance of genetic algorithms on the Olympus in order to confirm our
analysis and to find efficient CAs for the Majority problem with low
computational cost
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