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Computability and Non-computability Issues in Amorphous Computing

Computability and Non-computability Issues in Amorphous Computing

  • Jiří Wiedermann18 
  • Conference paper
  • 869 Accesses

  • 2 Citations

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNTCS,volume 7604)

Abstract

Amorphous computing systems consist of a huge set of tiny simple stationary or mobile processors whose computational, communication and sensory part is reduced to an absolute minimum. In an airborne medium the processors communicate via a short-range radio while in a waterborne medium via molecular communication. In some cases the computational part of the processors can be simplified down to finite state automata or even combinatorial circuits and the system as a whole can still possess universal computational power with a high probability. We will argue that the amorphous systems belong among the simplest (non-uniform) universal computational devices. On the other hand, it is questionable as to what extent the standard universal models of computation can faithfully capture the behavior of amorphous computing systems whose functionality also depends on the non-computational and/or unpredictable operations of certain parts of the entire system.

Keywords

  • Cellular Automaton
  • Quorum Sensing
  • Turing Machine
  • Combinatorial Circuit
  • Unbounded Number

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

This work was partially supported by RVO 67985807 and the GA ČR grant No. P202/10/1333.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Computer Science, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Pod Vodárenskou věží 2, 182 07, Prague 8, Czech Republic

    Jiří Wiedermann

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  1. Jiří Wiedermann
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), Science Park 123, 1098 XG, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Jos C. M. Baeten & Frank S. de Boer & 

  2. Microsoft Research, One Microsoft Way, 98052, Redmond, WA, USA

    Tom Ball

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© 2012 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing

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Wiedermann, J. (2012). Computability and Non-computability Issues in Amorphous Computing. In: Baeten, J.C.M., Ball, T., de Boer, F.S. (eds) Theoretical Computer Science. TCS 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7604. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33475-7_1

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