English

Noun

cellular automaton ‎(plural cellular automata or cellular automatons)

A glider gun in the Game of Life cellular automaton.

1. (computing theory) An automaton consisting of cells arranged in a regular grid, in one or more dimensions. Each application of an associated rule creates a new generation, where the cells have a new configuration of values.
   • 2012 July 3, Mike James, “A New Computational Universe - Fredkin's SALT CA”, in www.i-programmer.info, retrieved 2012-10-25:

     The paper concludes:
     The Busy Boxes variant of the SALT family of reversible cellular automata has shown itself to possess an intriguing number of features that are worthy of further study and analysis. Physicist Gerard T'Hooft has written about the possibility that reversible CA's such as this one may help elucidate some aspects of physics in the quantum realm [5]. We believe that the study of emergent, qualitative, and statistically predictable behavior of these kinds of discrete, deterministic systems can indeed shed light on questions in physics, and may also help to clarify the deeper principles of entropy and the origin of complex, selfpropagating systems such as those found in our biosphere

Abbreviations

• CA

Translations

See also

• pushdown automaton
• Turing machine