Ahouxt.180
net.misc
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!duke!chico!harpo!npois!houxi!houxt!4341jhf
Thu Feb 18 19:39:14 1982
Me and the Cellular Automata
Here's how I got interested...
Several years ago, while in Grad School (UVA Materials Science),
a friend told me (with great fervor)
about an article in Sci Am which dealt with Conway's game of LIFE.
He went on to describe some of the fascinating patterns and properties
of the "game", and told me about all the cpu cycles people
were burning in playing LIFE. He even showed me a rudimentary program
he wrote to play it. My curiosity was aroused.
Sometime later, I wrote my own "LIFE" program in (ug) BASIC.
Trouble was, I didn't exactly remember the rule set.
It turned out that I specified a rule set which I now call "parity",
it wasn't LIFE but it was interesting in it's own right!
I later got the Sci Am articles and corrected the program. I found
that LIFE was fascinating, but excruciatingly slooooowwwwww
over a 300 baud line to my home brew terminal. (This was around 1973.)
I had already built my own homebrew terminal, and had previously fooled
around with video pattern displays, and was looking for something else
to build. Besides, who wants to wait for ever for output.
So I decided to build hardware into my
homebrew terminal so that it could play LIFE as well as the "parity" game
I inadvertently discovered.
I built the hardware.
It was GREAT.... gliders zipping about, simple patterns
duplicating, ..... a mesmerizing kaleidoscope of patterns!
I was hooked.
It was some time later that I learned that I had built a
simple cellular automata.
Over the next two years the hardware evolved into my present machine:
64 by 64 bi-state space of cells which can be either:
warped (wrap-around across the edges)
or flat (border of fixed zero "cells")
1 to 8 nearest-neighbor cell neighborhood (switch selectable)
1 of 8 transitions selectable for each neighborhood "state" or count
- turn cell off
- turn cell on
- invert state of cell
- retain state of cell
and - 1 of 4 adjustable random values
30 generations per second displayed on a CRT
I am currently using this machine for the following:
-entertainment of a sort
-investigation of rule sets and effects of starting patterns
-search for new oscillators and stable patterns
-playing with "nucleation like phenomena" using random rules
-search for aesthetic patterns
(an artist friend borrowed the machine and got hooked
for almost two weeks)
-output device for cellular automata software
simulator I am developing in C
I don't have too much time to build hardware these days, but I still
dream about building a great mother machine with a 128x128 cell
space in full color, etc... that runs at 30-60 generations per second.
These days I'm learning C by writing programs which simulate more complex
cellular automata, and to see if it would be
worth building the BIG machine.
I've already learned a number of new things without burning many cpu cycles.
I'd love to hear from anyone with a similar (related?) interest,
and in particular if you have any interesting hardware, programs,
patterns, or references on the subject.
(I already have Burke's Essays on Cellular Automata, and all
Sci Am and BTYE articles.)
O O
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O O O O
O O O
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OO OO John Fikus (houxt!4341jhf)
O O BTL FJ 1F105 x5222
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