The Blob Division: A "Hardware-Free", Time Efficient, Self-Reproduction on 2D Cellular Automaton

This work is part of the Blob computing project whose goal is to develop a new model of parallel machine including a new model of computation and a new machine. The whole project idea is to try to capture basic principles of bio-computing system allowing massive parallelism. The model of computation is based on the concept of selfdeveloping network of compute nodes, the machine is a 2-D cellular automaton grid whose evolution rule is fixed and implemented by simplified physical laws. A machine configuration represents idealized physical objects such as membrane or particle gas. A central object called blob is the harware image of a compute node. Based on published formal proof, this paper presents first an implementation of the blob object using the “programmable matter” platform of Cellular Automaton simulation. Then it describes an implementation of Blob division, the machine implementation of compute node duplication. We used five different kinds of cellular automaton rules, all explained in separate boxes. The result obtained can be classified as a new specific form of self-reproducing cellular automaton. Unlike past examples of self-reproduction, it happens in parallel, since the number of time steps necessary is proportional to √ (p), where p measures the information (number of bits) contained in the object to duplicate.