(definition)
Definition: Usually a two-dimensional organization of simple finite state machines whose next state depends on their own state and the states of their eight closest neighbors. In general the machines may be arranged in meshes of higher or lower dimension, have larger neighborhoods, or be arbitrarily complex processors.
Note: Conway's game of Life is probably the most well known instance of a cellular automaton.
Author: PEB
If you have suggestions, corrections, or comments, please get in touch with Paul E. Black.
Entry modified Fri Dec 17 12:02:55 2004.
HTML page formatted Wed Oct 26 09:47:19 2005.
Cite this as:
Paul E. Black, "cellular automaton", from
Dictionary of Algorithms and Data
Structures, Paul E. Black, ed.,
NIST.
http://www.nist.gov/dads/HTML/cellulartmtn.html
