Abstract
The study of amorphous computing aims to identify useful programming methodologies that will enable us to engineer the emergent behaviour of a myriad, locally interacting computing elements (agents). We anticipate that in order to keep such massively distributed systems cheap, the elements must be bulk manufactured. Therefore, we use a conservative model in which the agents run asynchronously, are interconnected in unknown and possibly time-varying ways, communicate only locally, and are identically programmed. We present a description of this model, and some of the results that have been obtained with it, particularly in the areas of pattern formation and the development of programming languages that are specifically suited to our model. Finally, we briefly describe some of the ongoing efforts in amorphous computing, and we present some of the interesting and important problems that still remain open in amorphous computing.
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Coore, D. (2005). Introduction to Amorphous Computing. In: Banâtre, JP., Fradet, P., Giavitto, JL., Michel, O. (eds) Unconventional Programming Paradigms. UPP 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3566. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11527800_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11527800_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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