Wireworld, alternatively WireWorld, is a

cellular automaton A cellular automaton (pl. cellular automata, abbrev. CA) is a discrete model of computation studied in automata theory. Cellular automata are also called cellular spaces, tessellation automata, homogeneous structures, cellular structures, tesse ...

first proposed by

Brian Silverman Brian Silverman is a Canadian computer scientist, the creator of many programming environments for children,Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it ...

''. Wireworld is particularly suited to simulating

transistor upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink). A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch ...

s, and is

Turing-complete In computability theory, a system of data-manipulation rules (such as a computer's instruction set, a programming language, or a cellular automaton) is said to be Turing-complete or computationally universal if it can be used to simulate any ...

Rules

A Wireworld cell can be in one of four different states, usually numbered 0–3 in software, modeled by colors in the examples here:

empty (black),
electron head (blue),
electron tail (red),
conductor (yellow).

As in all cellular automata, time proceeds in discrete steps called generations (sometimes "gens" or "ticks"). Cells behave as follows: * empty → empty, * electron head → electron tail, * electron tail → conductor, * conductor → electron head if exactly one or two of the neighbouring cells are electron heads, otherwise remains conductor. Wireworld uses what is called the

Moore neighborhood In cellular automata, the Moore neighborhood is defined on a two-dimensional square lattice and is composed of a central cell and the eight cells that surround it. Name The neighborhood is named after Edward F. Moore, a pioneer of cellular aut ...

, which means that in the rules above, neighbouring means one cell away (range value of one) in any direction, both orthogonal and diagonal. These simple rules can be used to construct logic gates (see below).

Applications

Entities built within Wireworld universes include Langton's Ant (allowing any Langton's Ant pattern to be built within Wireworld) and the Wireworld computer, a

computer implemented as a cellular automaton.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Wireworld
on Rosetta Code
The Wireworld computer in Java

No Wires
(contains an interactive Wireworld widget) Cellular automaton rules

Rules

Applications

See also

References

External links