Asynchronous logic automata

Numerous applications, from high-performance scientific computing to large, highresolution multi-touch interfaces to strong artifical intelligence, push the practical physical limits of modern computers. Typical computers attempt to hide the physics as much as possible, running software composed of a series of instructions drawn from an arbitrary set to be executed upon data that can be accessed uniformly. However, we submit that by exposing, rather than hiding, the density and velocity of information and the spatially concurrent, asynchronous nature of logic, scaling down in size and up in complexity becomes significantly easier. In particular, we introduce “asynchronous logic automata”, which are a specialization of both asynchronous cellular automata and Petri nets, and include Boolean logic primitives in each cell. We also show some example algorithms, means to create circuits, potential hardware implementations, and comparisons to similar models in past practice. Thesis Supervisor: Neil A. Gershenfeld Title: Director, Center for Bits and Atoms, Professor of Media Arts and Sciences