Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!rpi!iear.arts.rpi.edu!kyriazis
From: kyriazis@iear.arts.rpi.edu (George Kyriazis)
Newsgroups: comp.theory.cell-automata
Subject: Re: hiebeler's rap
Message-ID: <^-+#5%+@rpi.edu>
Date: 2 Mar 90 18:37:25 GMT
References: <9003020522.AA25938@megalon.acad.com>
Distribution: inet
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY
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In article <9003020522.AA25938@megalon.acad.com> rudy@megalon.UUCP (Rudy Rucker) writes:
>
>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.

Are we talking here about merging CA with computer engineering or better
VLSI design?  I remember talking to Dave (Hiebeler) about it a few
years ago, but then all he had was the CAM machine with not so many bits
per cell.

In VLSI you have several layers of material, eg. diffusion, poly, metal, etc.
Whenever poly crosses diffusion you have a transistor.  The circuit
shrinker can get help from the several layout rules that exist for each
technology. The major question that comes to my mind is:  Will CA's be
eventually fast enough to accurately simulate such a circuit, and if
yes are there any advantages over traditional circuit simulators, like SPICE?

disclaimer:  I am a computer engineer, not a computer scientist.



----------------------------------------------------------------------
  George Kyriazis                 kyriazis@turing.cs.rpi.edu
				  kyriazis@rdrc.rpi.edu
 				  kyriazis@iear.arts.rpi.edu