From Utopian to Genuine Unconventional Computers - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0955117097 ISBN 13: 9780955117091

Publisher: Luniver Press, 2006

Synopsis

Unconventional computing is a field of advanced computer science, which general goal might be summarised as the quest for both new groundbreaking algorithms and physical implementations of novel and ultimately more powerful - compared to classical approaches - computing paradigms and machines. This volume brings together work that especially focuses on experimental prototypes and genuine implementations of non-classical computing devices. A further goal was to revisit existing approaches in unconventional computing, to provide scientists and engineers with blue-prints of realisable computing devices, and to take a critical glance at the design of novel and emergent computing systems to point out failures and shortcomings of both theoretical and experimental approaches.

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From the Publisher:

In the very first chapter, "On digital VLSI circuits exploiting collision-based fusion gates", Yamada, Motoike, Asai, and Amemiya propose a novel method to design VLSI circuits, based on fusion gates, which itself was discovered by designing logical circuits in excitable chemical media. They show an efficient way to build logic gates, which would at the same time allow them to operate at high speed and low power.

The ultimate goal of Larry Bull and his collaborators is to build a chemical neural network in Belousov-Zhabotinsky media. The first stage of the project — which consists in controlling and adapting subexcitable chemical medium — is addressed in their contribution "Towards machine learning control of chemical computers". They do not employ geometrically-constraint media but use the light-sensitivity of the system to impose dynamical structures of quasi-neuronal connections instead. They then apply machine learning to direct wave fragments to an arbitrary position, and thus to solve a specific task.

Nicolas Glade gives us a biochemist’s view on computation. He explores micro-tubules as a media for in vitro computation. The computations are based on "chemical collisions" between micro-tubules. No definite computation schemes are provided, however, experimental evidence discussed suggests a huge computational potential with micro-tubules.

Yet another unconventional approach for a potential computing system is presented by Greenman, Ieropolous, and Melhuish: the implementation of Pavlovian reflexes in bacterial films. We envision that techniques outlined in "Perfusion anodophile biofilm electrodes and their potential for computing" will be used in future designs of bacteria-based controllers for autonomous robots, which are powered by bacterial cells.

Finally, in the last more practically-oriented contribution, Murphy et al implement physical sorting by using various methods, such as gel electrophoresis, mass spectroscopy, and chromatography. Amongst other wonderful things, their paper "Implementations of a model of physical sorting" tells us again that computation in physics and Nature is ubiquitous.

Universal computation is a key concept in computer science since its beginnings in the early fifties. In his contribution "Conventional or un- conventional: Is any computer universal?", Selim Akl discusses different evolving computational paradigms.

Wiesner and Crutchfield explore the language diversity of quantum finite-state generators — which occupy the lowest level of the still partially unknown hierarchy of quantum computation — and show that deterministic quantum finite-state generators have a larger language diversity than their classical analog stochastic finite-state generators. Concepts studied in Wiesner and Crutchfield’s "Language diversity of measured quantum processes" are currently rather far from any real-world implementation, however, they do certainly stimulate our brains with the esthetic of theoretical aspects.

Collision-based computing is a well-known unconventional computing paradigm, traced back to Conway’s Game of Life, Fredkin-Toffoli’s conservative logic, and Steiglitz’s particle machines. In "Logic circuits in a system of repelling particle", William Stevens develops a kinematic model of movable tiles in a two-dimensional environment and shows how dual-rail logic gates can be constructed.

Finally, De Vos and Van Rentergem study in "From group theory to reversible computer" the building-blocks for reversible computing architectures and show that a particular set can be used to synthesize arbitrary reversible circuits. They have also built and tested silicon implementations of adder circuits.

About this edition

• Publisher: Luniver Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0955117097
• ISBN 13: 9780955117091
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224
• Editor: Andrew Adamatzky, Christof Teuscher