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Computability in Amorphous Structures

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Computation and Logic in the Real World (CiE 2007)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 4497))

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Abstract

Amorphous computing differs from the classical ideas about computations almost in every aspect. The architecture of amorphous computers is random, since they consist of a plethora of identical computational units spread randomly over a given area. Within a limited radius the units can communicate wirelessly with their neighbors via a single-channel radio. We consider a model whose assumptions on the underlying computing and communication abilities are among the weakest possible: all computational units are finite state probabilistic automata working asynchronously, there is no broadcasting collision detection mechanism and no network addresses. We show that under reasonable probabilistic assumptions non-uniform families of such amorphous computers can possess universal computing power with a high probability. To the best of our knowledge this is the first result showing the universality of such computing systems.

This research was carried out within the institutional research plan AV0Z10300504 and partially supported by the GA ČR grant No. 1ET100300517 and GD201/05/ H014.

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Wiedermann, J., Petru, L. (2007). Computability in Amorphous Structures. In: Cooper, S.B., Löwe, B., Sorbi, A. (eds) Computation and Logic in the Real World. CiE 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4497. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73001-9_83

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73001-9_83

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-73000-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-73001-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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