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Computing

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First Talk

The implementation section of this page seems to be concerned with Langton's Loops, rather than Codd's automaton. I find this misleading, ideally Langton's Loops would have their own page. But then I've never seen a web page that described Codd's automaton in any detail at all (or Thatcher's for that matter) and since these works are quite old now I can't get hold of the papers. Thoughts? Ferkel

Actually, you are correct, Dr. Hutton, the implementations for which links are present on this page are of Langton's Loops. This page is highly misleading, as anyone who knows the details of Langton's work understands that his system of cellular automata (properly, Langton cellular automata)

1. constitutes but a tiny subset of Codd's system, particularly with regard to the state transition rule;

2. is not Turing closed, whereas Codd's system is Turing closed.

Further, as with you, I have no knowledge of any implementations of Codd's system of cellular automata, save my own (an emulator I implemented in 1985, and which executes under the Microsoft DOS operating system), which is not suitable for presentation on the web. On the other hand, it should be easy for you (and any other reader) to obtain a copy of Codd's Ph.D. dissertation, titled Cellular Automata, a monograph published in 1968 by Academic Press.

Of course, there is the notion of taking initiative, and building your own emulator. The original players of Core War did exactly that: they built their own MARS.

I would argue that the systems of Byl, Sayama, and the reputed system constructed by Mark Ludwig, all of which extended Langton's work, ought to be included within the Wikipedia, each having their own article.

One last point. Codd called the UCC a Universal Computer-Constructor. I believe the Universal Constructor-Copier is a term derived from Daniel Mange. William R. Buckley 03:20, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Gabot T. Herman used the term Universal Computer-Constructor, as well, in 1973. William R. Buckley 16:50, 21 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So too did Codd, in his dissertation, published as Cellular Automata in (IIRC) 1968. William R. Buckley (talk) 16:53, 25 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

ToDo

In case you want to work on the source, you could

Find a public domain server/homepage to put the applet and code onto.
Get Codd's original Transition Function into a file (see tab.txt).
Implement other concepts introduced by E. F. Codd, such as signal injection.

ANIMATE GIF!?

wiki need images, animate gifs are valid and not-heavy...

indicated Java may be a animate gif on the article!

For what?

Good scientists, like von Neumann and Codd, also like to play... they was playing with mathematical games? Or its a "science thing"?

Article need explain what: and other "problem contexts", usage, link theories, etc.

Size of von Neumann's self-replicating cellular automaton

As the person who has actually constructed a self-replicating machine within the 29-state cellular automata of John von Neumann, I am in a position to declare that such a machine is not of the order of 300K cells, and that is to include the tape. The smallest such configuration that I have constructed is about 12K cells, has a 5-bit tape code, and using auto-retraction as a compression method, requires on the order of 150K cells; again, this includes the tape. The details presented in this article need to be corrected. William R. Buckley (talk) 08:15, 18 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]