ECS289B - Novel Computing Technologies
Discussion topic for 02/22/2001:  Amorphous Computing


Reading:  Abelson, et al., "Amorphous Computing," available on the web at
http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/projects/amorphous/papers/aim1665.pdf


Questions:

1. What are some of the characteristics of the "computational particles" in an
amorphous system?


2. What is a "hop count"?  Why is it useful during diffusion wave
propagation in
an amorphous system?


3. How can amorphous computing be used to simulate physical phenomena that
traditionally are represented by differential equations?


4. Briefly describe the scalability problem inherent with the method of
cellular
computing described in this paper.


5. Considering that cellular computing would be very slow, what utility is
foreseen
for such an enterprise?  How is amorphous computing involved?