rudy@megalon.UUCP (Rudy Rucker) (03/02/90)
Using a lot of states to represent all components is a nice idea. You can have states 0 thru 255, so you can have a cell that is aan and gate, a cell that is an or gate, a cell that is a source of faults, etc. So then you can make tiny tiny wireworld circuits. And animate them. Chip designers use something like this, I guess, tho they run slowly? Question: what are some interesting small wireworld circuits? ALife idea: alife ants have brains that are small wireworld patches, say 10 by 20 with 8 bits per cell, kind of like that old game Robotropolis. Research Guidline Request: What would be a neat small circuit to build? Adders are kind of lame, too much like reinventing the wheel. How about a circuit to compute pi? Too hard for starters. How about a circuit which will generate the digits of the binary expansion of the square root of two. That would be fun, and a very interesting thing to use for the brain of an alife bopster.
eric@earth.UUCP (Eric Lyons) (03/03/90)
Who is the ca@think.com group? The original posting sounds like it might have been interesting. Or maybe did you just accidentally post your response to tech? Eric.
kyriazis@iear.arts.rpi.edu (George Kyriazis) (03/03/90)
In article <9003020522.AA25938@megalon.acad.com> rudy@megalon.UUCP (Rudy Rucker) writes: > >Research Guidline Request: What would be a neat small circuit to build? >Adders are kind of lame, too much like reinventing the wheel. How about >a circuit to compute pi? Too hard for starters. How about a circuit >which will generate the digits of the binary expansion of the square root >of two. That would be fun, and a very interesting thing to use for the >brain of an alife bopster. Are we talking here about merging CA with computer engineering or better VLSI design? I remember talking to Dave (Hiebeler) about it a few years ago, but then all he had was the CAM machine with not so many bits per cell. In VLSI you have several layers of material, eg. diffusion, poly, metal, etc. Whenever poly crosses diffusion you have a transistor. The circuit shrinker can get help from the several layout rules that exist for each technology. The major question that comes to my mind is: Will CA's be eventually fast enough to accurately simulate such a circuit, and if yes are there any advantages over traditional circuit simulators, like SPICE? disclaimer: I am a computer engineer, not a computer scientist. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- George Kyriazis kyriazis@turing.cs.rpi.edu kyriazis@rdrc.rpi.edu kyriazis@iear.arts.rpi.edu