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Four Small Universal Turing Machines

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Machines, Computations, and Universality (MCU 2007)

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Abstract

We present small polynomial time universal Turing machines with state-symbol pairs of (5,5), (6,4), (9,3) and (18,2). These machines simulate our new variant of tag system, the bi-tag system and are the smallest known universal Turing machines with 5, 4, 3 and 2-symbols respectively. Our 5-symbol machine uses the same number of instructions (22) as the smallest known universal Turing machine by Rogozhin.

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Jérôme Durand-Lose Maurice Margenstern

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Neary, T., Woods, D. (2007). Four Small Universal Turing Machines. In: Durand-Lose, J., Margenstern, M. (eds) Machines, Computations, and Universality. MCU 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4664. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74593-8_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74593-8_21

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-74592-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-74593-8

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