Wireworld computer [Flash] | Hacker News Reader

Wireworld computer [Flash]

rezmason.net

13 pointsmkirsche11 comments

Simulation of the Wireworld computer, calculating primes.

A description of how the computer works can be found at http://www.quinapalus.com/wi-index.html

This is a good demo of how cellular automata don’t always have to look or behave like the Game of Life. Wireworld has four cell states—dead, wire, head, and tail—where dead cells stay dead; heads decay into tails, and tails into wires; wires become heads when excited by one or two heads; and wires stay wires otherwise. You can easily see how this gives rise to the “electrons on the subway” effect.

And in this system it’s fairly straightforward to actually build systems that compute things—albeit glacially slow. Contrast that with the Game of Life, where computation is more of an interesting emergent behaviour that’s about as easy as butterfly programming.

For a better demo of this, download Golly and open Wireworld/primes.mc. Start it playing and hit + a few times to increase the speed. http://golly.sourceforge.net/

Golly has other cellular automata computers too, in the JvN folder.

Doesn't seem to do anything? I thought the counter would increase in a flurry of pulses but after watching it for a good five minutes, nothing happened.

It's looking for prime numbers.

Try the overdrive mode (butten next to the bunny) if you are impatient.

Now just need an svg/canvas version and a way to cheaply print it to silicon.

Try FPGA/CPLD.

So can you make logic gates in this?

Yes. See, e.g., http://mathworld.wolfram.com/WireWorld.html which has examples of OR, XOR and AND gates, and a little 8-bit multiplier.

Oh, but what about NOT gates?

EDIT: never mind, found not gates here: http://karlscherer.com/Wireworld.html

This wireworld rules, never heard of it before, and initially thought it was invented just now by the maker of the Flash app but now know better :)

>[Flash]

As if.

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