

Wireworld computer [Flash] - mkirsche
http://www.rezmason.net/wireworld/
Simulation of the Wireworld computer, calculating primes.<p>A description of how the computer works can be found at http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quinapalus.com&#x2F;wi-index.html
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evincarofautumn
This is a good demo of how cellular automata don’t always have to look or
behave like the Game of Life. Wireworld has four cell states—dead, wire, head,
and tail—where dead cells stay dead; heads decay into tails, and tails into
wires; wires become heads when excited by one or two heads; and wires stay
wires otherwise. You can easily see how this gives rise to the “electrons on
the subway” effect.

And in this system it’s fairly straightforward to actually build systems that
compute things—albeit glacially slow. Contrast that with the Game of Life,
where computation is more of an interesting emergent behaviour that’s about as
easy as butterfly programming.

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tim_hutton
For a better demo of this, download Golly and open Wireworld/primes.mc. Start
it playing and hit + a few times to increase the speed.
[http://golly.sourceforge.net/](http://golly.sourceforge.net/)

Golly has other cellular automata computers too, in the JvN folder.

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robinduckett
Doesn't seem to do anything? I thought the counter would increase in a flurry
of pulses but after watching it for a good five minutes, nothing happened.

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mkirsche
Try the overdrive mode (butten next to the bunny) if you are impatient.

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pablisco
Now just need an svg/canvas version and a way to cheaply print it to silicon.

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thesmok
Try FPGA/CPLD.

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Aardwolf
So can you make logic gates in this?

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gjm11
Yes. See, e.g.,
[http://mathworld.wolfram.com/WireWorld.html](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/WireWorld.html)
which has examples of OR, XOR and AND gates, and a little 8-bit multiplier.

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Aardwolf
Oh, but what about NOT gates?

EDIT: never mind, found not gates here:
[http://karlscherer.com/Wireworld.html](http://karlscherer.com/Wireworld.html)

This wireworld rules, never heard of it before, and initially thought it was
invented just now by the maker of the Flash app but now know better :)

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pearjuice
>[Flash]

As if.

