General purpose field computer simulator

Field computers are massively parallel analog machines built around the idea of a field (i.e., continuous ensemble of data). The processing in these machines is performed by field transformation operators, which typically map application-dependent transformation functions over fields to produce new fields (mapping is done in parallel over the entire field's domain). Various special purpose field computers have been designed in the past (i.e., large neurocomputers, optical computers, and molecular computers), and because these machines are closely related (in a sense the only architectural difference between them is that they support different sets of field transformation operators), we expect that a general purpose (programmable) field computer, one which supports a wide variety of field transformation operators, will give us the flexibilty to program many applications on the same machine. The first step in the design of a general purpose field computer was the theoretical development, completed by MacLennan (see [BMcLe90a]). In this thesis we implemented the next logical step of the design process; design of a system that simulates a general purpose field computer. We described the set of field transformation operators which we believe should be sufficient for programming practical applications, implemented the operators (wrote the software), and demonstrated the usage of the simulator by implementing the continuous version of Conway's "Game of Life".