Wireworld

Principle

Wireworld is a cellular automaton. Sparkles are propagated along wires at each cycle. Despite its apparent simplicity, it allows to simulate advanced computers and is Turing complete.

Use

Left click (or simple tap) → put or remove a wire

Right click (or long press) → put or remove a sparkle (Electron Head)

Play/Pause → run/pause auto generations (Step advances one generation)

Rules

A Wireworld cell can be in one of four different states: Empty , Electron head (), Electron tail , and Connector.

As in all cellular automata, time proceeds in discrete steps called generations. Cells behave as follows:

• Empty → Empty
• Electron head → Electron tail
• Electron tail → Connector
• Connector
  • → Electron head if exactly one or two of the neighboring cells are electron heads
  • → remains connector otherwise

In the rules above, neighboring means one cell away in any direction, both orthogonal and diagonal.

Logic gates

From there, you can build logic gates, taking signals in input and performing a logic operation:

• 

  Diodes

  If the sparkle comes from the three blocks side it goes through, otherwise it is stopped.

• Basic computation

  "Or", "Xor" (exclusive or), and "And" functions
  

Learn more

• More information on wireworld on Wikipedia
• Logic gates in wireworld
• Full set of gates and logic devices
• An advanced example from our friends in Grenoble