Search found 10 matches

by Johnicholas
February 15th, 2013, 12:24 pm
Forum: Other Cellular Automata
Topic: Busy Beaver Turmite Challenge
Replies: 10
Views: 11260

Re: Busy Beaver Turmite Challenge

Are there probability distributions over turmites (or functions from sizes to probability distributions over turmites of that size) which generally have large mean / median halting times? Given a nice probability distribution, you can generate a lot of examples, test them, and the quality of the bes...
by Johnicholas
September 2nd, 2011, 8:03 am
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: Does hashlife JIT away interpretive layers?
Replies: 4
Views: 3568

Re: Does hashlife JIT away interpretive layers?

Thank you very much!
by Johnicholas
September 1st, 2011, 3:10 pm
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: Does hashlife JIT away interpretive layers?
Replies: 4
Views: 3568

Re: Does hashlife JIT away interpretive layers?

I'm not sure, but would it be correct to say that if golly (or rather, hashlife) stops adding macrocells of a particular size (because new macrocells of that size stop turning up) then it's done thinking about that level? That is, all of its questions are being answered with a hash lookup, and it do...
by Johnicholas
September 1st, 2011, 7:42 am
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: Does hashlife JIT away interpretive layers?
Replies: 4
Views: 3568

Does hashlife JIT away interpretive layers?

Would it be true to say that for any unit cell (like David Bell's unit life cell, or Brice Due's metapixel, or calcyman's stable, programmable metapixel), that hashlife will churn through figuring out the operation of the unit cell in constant time, and then spend all of the rest of its time operati...
by Johnicholas
August 31st, 2011, 10:47 pm
Forum: Patterns
Topic: Wishlist
Replies: 24
Views: 20099

Re: Wishlist

A unit cell of the 1-d firing squad cellular automata (Mazoyer's six-state CA, or some other one), similar to Jason Summers' unit cell of rule 110.
by Johnicholas
August 29th, 2011, 8:31 pm
Forum: Other Cellular Automata
Topic: BBM: Turing Complete?
Replies: 3
Views: 3397

Re: BBM: Turing Complete?

You might enjoy: "Predicting Lattice Gases is P-complete" by Moore and Nordahl

http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~moore/pubs/lgas.html
by Johnicholas
August 29th, 2011, 8:21 pm
Forum: Scripts
Topic: python function to lookup-table-of-reflectors?
Replies: 3
Views: 4666

Re: python function to lookup-table-of-reflectors?

That's very interesting! I tried to write something to show what I was looking for; nothing so sophisticated as an assembler. It is not useable without source tweaking, and I may have gotten the reflector wrong; I'm an idiot at Life. # Based on bricklayer.py from PLife (http://plife.sourceforge.net/...
by Johnicholas
August 29th, 2011, 8:14 am
Forum: Scripts
Topic: python function to lookup-table-of-reflectors?
Replies: 3
Views: 4666

python function to lookup-table-of-reflectors?

If I understand correctly, both Paul Chapman's Minsky Register Machine and Calcyman's related Universal Computer-Constructor depend on lookup tables implemented by regular (in alignment but not in content) arrays of reflectors that express the microcode. That is, inputs come in on one edge of the lo...
by Johnicholas
August 26th, 2011, 3:53 pm
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: Current smallest/fastest universal computer?
Replies: 2
Views: 2477

Re: Current smallest/fastest universal computer?

Thank you very much! For anyone who might happen on this conversation, this is Calcyman's n^2 computer-constructor: http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/Spartan_universal_computer-constructor There's an article (linked from the wiki) about it here: http://pentadecathlon.com/lifeNews/2009/08/post.html The ...
by Johnicholas
August 26th, 2011, 2:06 pm
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: Current smallest/fastest universal computer?
Replies: 2
Views: 2477

Current smallest/fastest universal computer?

What is the cutting edge of universal computers in the GoL community? I'm aware of of Paul Chapman's (awesome) computer based on Minsky Register Machines: http://www.igblan.free-online.co.uk/igblan/ca/ and Paul Rendell's (awesome) universal turing machine: http://rendell-attic.org/gol/tm.htm Are the...