Digital life behavior in the Amoeba world.
Amoeba is a computer model designed to facilitate the study of the origin and evolution of digital life. Specifically, an initially disordered system, consisting of random sequences of machine instructions, self-organizes into an ordered system containing self-replicating programs. The current version of Amoeba broadens the original system's capability by using a basis set of 32 machine instructions that is computationally universal. In addition, Amoeba uses a set of 64 address labels, each of which is randomly assigned to a machine instruction each time a sequence is randomly created. This eliminates the constraint that occurs when the complements of predefined codons are used for addressing. A more open-ended system results because programs can now form subroutines that are arranged in an arbitrary manner.
Pargellis
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Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, NJ 07974, USA. anp@lucent.com
D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D003198:Computer Simulation; D008954:Models, Biological; D000069497:Origin of Life; D012984:Software; D014584:User-Computer Interface