Communication Complexity and Intrinsic Universality in Cellular Automata

The notions of universality and completeness are central in the theories of computation and computational complexity. However, proving lower bounds and necessary conditions remains hard in most of the cases. In this article, we introduce necessary conditions for a cellular automaton to be "universal", according to a precise notion of simulation, related both to the dynamics of cellular automata and to their computational power. This notion of simulation relies on simple operations of space-time rescaling and it is intrinsic to the model of cellular automata. Intrinsinc universality, the derived notion, is stronger than Turing universality, but more uniform, and easier to define and study. Our approach builds upon the notion of communication complexity, which was primarily designed to study parallel programs, and thus is, as we show in this article, particulary well suited to the study of cellular automata: it allowed to show, by studying natural problems on the dynamics of cellular automata, that several classes of cellular automata, as well as many natural (elementary) examples, could not be intrinsically universal

Amalgams of inverse semigroups and reversible two-counter machines

We show that the word problem for an amalgam $[S_1,S_2;U,\omega_1,\omega_2]$ of inverse semigroups may be undecidable even if we assume $S_1$ and $S_2$ (and therefore $U$) to have finite $\mathcal{R}$-classes and $\omega_1,\omega_2$ to be computable functions, interrupting a series of positive decidability results on the subject. This is achieved by encoding into an appropriate amalgam of inverse semigroups 2-counter machines with sufficient universality, and relating the nature of certain \sch graphs to sequences of computations in the machine

Intrinsically universal one-dimensional quantum cellular automata in two flavours

We give a one-dimensional quantum cellular automaton (QCA) capable of simulating all others. By this we mean that the initial configuration and the local transition rule of any one-dimensional QCA can be encoded within the initial configuration of the universal QCA. Several steps of the universal QCA will then correspond to one step of the simulated QCA. The simulation preserves the topology in the sense that each cell of the simulated QCA is encoded as a group of adjacent cells in the universal QCA. The encoding is linear and hence does not carry any of the cost of the computation. We do this in two flavours: a weak one which requires an infinite but periodic initial configuration and a strong one which needs only a finite initial configuration. KEYWORDS: Quantum cellular automata, Intrinsic universality, Quantum computation.Comment: 27 pages, revtex, 23 figures. V3: The results of V1-V2 are better explained and formalized, and a novel result about intrinsic universality with only finite initial configurations is give

Bulking II: Classifications of Cellular Automata

This paper is the second part of a series of two papers dealing with bulking: a way to define quasi-order on cellular automata by comparing space-time diagrams up to rescaling. In the present paper, we introduce three notions of simulation between cellular automata and study the quasi-order structures induced by these simulation relations on the whole set of cellular automata. Various aspects of these quasi-orders are considered (induced equivalence relations, maximum elements, induced orders, etc) providing several formal tools allowing to classify cellular automata

Universalities in cellular automata; a (short) survey

This reading guide aims to provide the reader with an easy access to the study of universality in the field of cellular automata. To fulfill this goal, the approach taken here is organized in three parts: a detailled chronology of seminal papers, a discussion of the definition and main properties of universal cellular automata, and a broad bibliography

A Survey of Cellular Automata: Types, Dynamics, Non-uniformity and Applications

Cellular automata (CAs) are dynamical systems which exhibit complex global behavior from simple local interaction and computation. Since the inception of cellular automaton (CA) by von Neumann in 1950s, it has attracted the attention of several researchers over various backgrounds and fields for modelling different physical, natural as well as real-life phenomena. Classically, CAs are uniform. However, non-uniformity has also been introduced in update pattern, lattice structure, neighborhood dependency and local rule. In this survey, we tour to the various types of CAs introduced till date, the different characterization tools, the global behaviors of CAs, like universality, reversibility, dynamics etc. Special attention is given to non-uniformity in CAs and especially to non-uniform elementary CAs, which have been very useful in solving several real-life problems.Comment: 43 pages; Under review in Natural Computin