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Amorphous Computing

  • Reference work entry
Computational Complexity

  • 418 Accesses

Article Outline

Glossary

Definition of the Subject

Introduction

The Amorphous Computing Model

Programming Amorphous Systems

Amorphous Computing Paradigms

Primitives for Amorphous Computing

Means of Combination and Abstraction

Supporting Infrastructure and Services

Lessons for Engineering

Future Directions

Bibliography

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Abbreviations

Amorphous computer:

A collection of computational particles dispersed irregularly on a surface or throughout a volume, where individual particles have no a priori knowledge of their positions or orientations.

Computational particle:

A (possibly faulty) individual device for an amorphous computer.Each particle has modest computing power and a modest amount of memory. The particles are not synchronized, although they are all capable of operating at similar speeds, since they are fabricated by the same process. All particles are programmed identically, although each particle has means for storing local state and for generating random numbers.

Field:

A function assigning a value to every particle in an amorphous computer.

Gradient:

A basic amorphous computing primitive that estimates the distance from each particle to the nearest particle designated as a source of the gradient.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA

    Hal Abelson, Jacob Beal & Gerald Jay Sussman

Authors
  1. Hal Abelson
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  2. Jacob Beal
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  3. Gerald Jay Sussman
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. RAMTECH LIMITED, 122 Escalle Lane, Larkspur, CA, 94939, USA

    Robert A. Meyers Ph. D. (Editor-in-Chief) (Editor-in-Chief)

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Abelson, H., Beal, J., Sussman, G.J. (2012). Amorphous Computing . In: Meyers, R. (eds) Computational Complexity. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1800-9_11

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