Automaton review6/17/2023 ![]() But with the exception of quantum computing, examples of really useful applications are as yet few and far between. There’s no shortage of promising ideas and even prototypes of unconventional forms of computing (we’ve looked at few from this group at the University of the West of England before). That’s a big prize, if it can be achieved. If this were possible, a computation would force a relatively simple physical system to simulate the behaviour of a much more complex one. The second reason is that it may well be possible to create glider cyclotrons using certain kinds of polymer chains, which can be made to behave like cellular automata. That has the potential to make the modelling easier and more accurate. This kind of collision-based computation has a big advantage over conventional computing because it already shares many properties in common with the system it is emulating. They’re thinking of things like kinks, breathers and solitons in molecular chains, phasons in quasi-crystals, kinks in ferromagnets and so on. First, Martiniez and pals say these supercolliders can emulate a whole class of natural collisions that are otherwise difficult to model. That’s impressive but but why is it any more useful than other forms of computation? The answer is twofold. ![]() Martinez and co solve this by routing beams past other virtual structures which behave like the magnets in real particle accelerators, kicking particles into line as they pass.Īnd, to put the icing on the cake, Martinez and co have engineered collisions between swarms of gliders in such a way that they carry out computations. Particles in a cellular automaton tend to move in straight lines so one challenge is to find ways to steer the beams so that they collide. Making such a device is not entirely straightforward. Today, Genaro Martinez at the University of the West of England in Bristol and a few pals announce that they have created and tested just such a glider cyclotron. Toffoli’s insight was to understand that this process is essentially a computation and that glider supercolliders could carry out complex calculations. When one particle interacts with another, the bit strings can end up being modified to produce other bit strings. Each particle is no more than a string of bits.
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