The Development of a Computational Environment for Cellular Automata

Yuhei AKAMINE
Satoshi ENDO
Koji YAMADA

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information and Systems   Vol.E88-D    No.9    pp.2105-2112
Publication Date: 2005/09/01
Online ISSN: 
DOI: 10.1093/ietisy/e88-d.9.2105
Print ISSN: 0916-8532
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: Automata and Formal Language Theory
Keyword: 
cellular automata,  simulator,  complex systems,  

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Summary: 
In this paper, we introduce and describe the computational environment that we have developed for cellular automata (CA). CA are powerful methods to understand and simulate the behavior of complex systems such as traffic jams, fluid crosscurrents, and natural disasters. In CA method, modeling of such a system or a phenomenon is to define a transition function, which determines local interactions, so-called "CA rules." However, no systematic method for design of CA rules has been established. We require a CA simulator for "trial and error" in study of modeling based on CA. Furthermore, the CA simulation environment that does not require special knowledge of a user for parallel processing is desired. The purpose of this study is to develop a comprehensive system that enables us to expedite the design of local rules and to accelerate simulations. We have implemented two kinds of simulators differing in their characteristics to improve both design efficiency and execution speed. The major difference between the two simulators is whether a source code is compiled or not. The source code is described in DORA language the authors have designed for the system. DORA language is designed for describing CA rules simply.

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