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From: tarquin@athena.mit.edu (Robert P Poole)
Newsgroups: comp.theory.cell-automata,sci.electronics
Subject: Re: John Conway's "Life"/Pseudo-Neural hardware implementation
Message-ID: <1990Nov2.033550.6225@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 2 Nov 90 03:35:50 GMT
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Such a hard-wired "LIFE computer" implementing Conway's rules of the game of
Life has already been built.  Some grad student here at MIT built the computer
while LIFE was a popular thing at the AI lab.  Not sure if it used the same
massive parallelism as you describe, but that kind of parallelism is hard to
wire unless you are (a) patient, or (b) into monolithic VLSI design.

You could build a version of this with off-the-shelf components for $100 or so,
assuming a limited array size of 20x20 or so.  But I don't envy your cramps
from all that wire-wrapping.

--
Robert P. Poole                       tarquin@athena.mit.edu
46 Massachusetts Avenue               MIT Course VIII
311B Bexley Hall                      "We make Idols of our concepts, but
Cambridge, MA  02139                   wisdom is born of wonder."