Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!megalon.UUCP!rudy
From: rudy@megalon.UUCP (Rudy Rucker)
Newsgroups: comp.theory.cell-automata
Subject: hiebeler's rap
Message-ID: <9003020522.AA25938@megalon.acad.com>
Date: 2 Mar 90 05:22:22 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
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Organization: The Internet
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Using a lot of states to represent all components is a nice idea.  You
can have states 0 thru 255, so you can have a cell that is aan and gate,
a cell that is an or gate, a cell that is a source of faults, etc.
So then you can make tiny tiny wireworld circuits.  And animate them.
Chip designers use something like this, I guess, tho they run slowly?

Question: what are some interesting small wireworld circuits?  

ALife idea: alife ants have brains that are small wireworld patches,
say 10 by 20 with 8 bits per cell, kind of like that old game Robotropolis.

Research Guidline Request:  What would be a neat small circuit to build?
Adders are kind of lame, too much like reinventing the wheel.  How about
a circuit to compute pi?  Too hard for starters.  How about a circuit
which will generate the digits of the binary expansion of the square root
of two.  That would be fun, and a very interesting thing to use for the
brain of an alife bopster.