Computing in Nonlinear Media and Automata Collectives
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Author(s): A. Adamatzky
Publisher: Institute of Physics
ISBN: 075030751X
Format: hardback
395pp
Price: £80.00, $120.00
Review Date: 07 November 2001
Review: This book aims to show how to design parallel processors from a massive poll of simple locally-interacting uniform substances. Computing in excitable lattices, processing in chemical thin layers and construction from amorphous swarms of social insects form the core topic of this book, guiding the reader from mathematical models of reaction-diffusion and excitable media to automata implementation of massively parallel processors to fabrication of working computing devices. Designing computing devices in nonlinear media is achieved in three steps. First, cellular automaton models of reaction-diffusion and excitable computing are built. Secondly natural analogies of simulated phenomena are identified. And thirdly, working prototypes of laboratory processors are fabricated. Plenty of examples are given of computation in cellular automata: swarms of mobile machines, thin-layer chemical liquids, insect societies, solitons, breathers and other wonders of nature.