Engineering amorphous systems, using global-to-local compilation

Abstract

Emerging technologies are making it possible to assemble systems that incorporate myriad of information-processing units at almost no cost: Smart materials, selfassembling structures, vast sensor networks, pervasive computing. How does one engineer robust and prespecified global behavior from the local interactions of immense numbers of unreliable parts? We discuss organizing principles and programming methodologies that have emerged from Amorphous Computing research, that allow us to compile a specification of global behavior into a robust program for local behavior. © 2006 Springer.