Amorphous computing: examples, mathematics and theory.
The cellular automata model was described by John von Neumann and his friends in the 1950s as a representation of information processing in multicellular tissue. With crystalline arrays of cells and synchronous activity, it missed the mark (Stark and Hughes, BioSystems 55:107-117, 2000). Recently, amorphous computing, a valid model for morphogenesis in multicellular information processing, has begun to fill the void. Through simple examples and elementary mathematics, this paper begins a computation theory for this important new direction.
Department of Mathematics & Statistics, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620-5700 USA.
W Richard
WR
Stark
Amorphous computing; Asynchronous; Computation theory; Distributed processes; Probability measure