GCA: Global Cellular Automata. A Flexible Parallel Model

A model called global cellular automata (GCA) will be introduced. The new model preserves the good features of the cellular automata but overcomes its restrictions. In the GCA the cell state consists of a data field and additional pointers. Via these pointers, each cell has read access to any other cell in the cell field, and the pointers may be changed from generation to generation. Compared to the cellular automata the neighbourhood is dynamic and differs from cell to cell. For many applications parallel algorithms can be found straight forward and can directly be mapped on this model. As the model is also massive parallel in a simple way, it can efficiently be supported by hardware.