Tutorials/General technology
So now, after coming across a good cellular automata, you have decided to do something with it — something more significant than random soup searching and more engaging than automatic software searching. Then you begin to consider signal circuitry, the very connection between microscopic evolution and macroscopic construction.
What is a signal and what do they do?
A signal is a moving configuration different from its background, and thus carrying some information. In terms of cellular automata, the following patterns can serve as signals:
- Spaceships in an empty medium,
- Fuses, drifters and negative spaceships in some nonempty media, and
- Methuselahs and other active reactions in conduits.
A signal travels through the space at a certain speed, which is an important measure since timing (especially synchronization) decides whether signal circuitry works or not.
Signals transform and interact in various ways. A lone signal can be created, reflected and/or flipped, delayed/advanced, multiplicated, transformed into other signal(s), or destroyed. Two or more signals react to annihilate or to perform logic operations. These rely on some devices, namely guns/factorys, reflectors, advancer, pulse dividers, duplicators, converters, eaters, Boolean logic gates, etc.
How to find these building blocks?
Constructing signal circuitry involves both human idea and computer power. Here some simple demonstration may provide hints on how to develop signal circuitry.
Example 1: Conway's Game of Life
Imagine travelling back to the early life days when the period-30 Gosper glider gun was first found.
Example 2:
Add your suggestion here (best with other kind of systems)!