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The Rule 110 cellular automaton (often called simply Rule 110)is an elementary cellular automaton with interesting behavior on the boundary between stability and chaos. In this respect, it is similar to Conway's Game of Life. Like Life, Rule 110 with a particular repeating background pattern is known to be Turing complete. This implies that, in principle, any calculation or computer program can be simulated using this automaton. In an elementary cellular automaton, a one-dimensional pattern of 0s and 1s evolves according to a simple set of rules. Whether a point in the pattern will be 0 or 1 in the new generation depends on its current value, as well as on those of its two neighbors. The Rule 110 automaton has the following set of rules: The name "Rule 110" derives from the fact that this rule can be summarized in the binary sequence 01101110; interpreted as a binary number, this corresponds to the decimal value 110. This is the Wolfram code naming scheme. In 2004, Matthew Cook published a proof that Rule 110 with a particular repeating background pattern is Turing complete, i.e., capable of universal computation, which Stephen Wolfram had conjectured in 1985. Cook presented his proof at the Santa Fe Institute conference CA98 before publication of Wolfram's book A New Kind of Science. This resulted in a legal affair based on a non-disclosure agreement with Wolfram Research. Wolfram Research blocked publication of Cook's proof for several years. Among the 88 possible unique elementary cellular automata, Rule 110 is the only one for which Turing completeness has been directly proven, although proofs for several similar rules follow as simple corollaries (e.g. Rule 124, which is the horizontal reflection of Rule 110). Rule 110 is arguably the simplest known Turing complete system. Rule 110, like the Game of Life, exhibits what Wolfram calls "Class 4 behavior", which is neither completely stable nor completely chaotic. Localized structures appear and interact in complex ways.

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Wolfram code

Wolfram code is a widely used numbering system for one-dimensional cellular automaton rules, introduced by Stephen Wolfram in a 1983 paper and popularized in his book A New Kind of Science. The code is based on the observation that a table specifying the new state of each cell in the automaton, as a function of the states in its neighborhood, may be interpreted as a k-digit number in the S-ary positional number system, where S is the number of states that each cell in the automaton may have, k = S2n + 1 is the number of neighborhood configurations, and n is the radius of the neighborhood.

Rule 110

Cellular automaton

A cellular automaton (pl. cellular automata, abbrev. CA) is a discrete model of computation studied in automata theory. Cellular automata are also called cellular spaces, tessellation automata, homogeneous structures, cellular structures, tessellation structures, and iterative arrays. Cellular automata have found application in various areas, including physics, theoretical biology and microstructure modeling. A cellular automaton consists of a regular grid of cells, each in one of a finite number of states, such as on and off (in contrast to a coupled map lattice).