Collision-Based Computing

Abstract

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012. All rights are reserved. Collision-based computing is an implementation of logical circuits, mathematical machines, or other computing and information processing devices in homogeneous, uniform and unstructured media with traveling mobile localizations. A quanta of information is represented by a compact propagating pattern (gliders in cellular automata, solitons in optical systems, wave fragments in excitable chemical systems). Logical truth corresponds to presence of the localization, logical false to absence of the localization; logical values can also be represented by a particular state of the localization. When two or more traveling localizations collide, they change their velocity vectors and/or states. Post-collision trajectories and/or states of the localizations represent results of logical operations implemented by the collision. One of the principal advantages of the collision-based computing medium-hidden in 1D systems but obvious in 2D and 3D media-is that the medium is architecture-less: nothing is hardwired, there are no stationary wires or gates, a trajectory of a propagating information quanta can be seen as a momentary wire. The basics of collision-based computing are introduced, and the collision-based computing schemes in 1D and 2D cellular automata and continuous excitable media are overviewed. Also a survey of collision-based schemes, where particles/collisions are dimensionless, is provided.