Chemical Computing

All information processing systems found in living organisms are based on chemical processes. Harnessing the power of chemistry for computing might lead to a new unifying paradigm coping with the rapidly increasing complexity and autonomy of computational systems. Chemical computing refers to computing with real molecules as well as to programming electronic devices using principles taken from chemistry. The paper focuses on the latter, called artificial chemical computing, and discusses several aspects of how the metaphor of chemistry can be employed to build technical information processing systems. In these systems, computation emerges out of an interplay of many decentralized relatively simple components analogized to molecules. Chemical programming encompassed then the definition of molecules, reaction rules, and the topology and dynamics of the reaction space. Due to the self-organizing nature of chemical dynamics, new programming methods are required. Potential approaches for chemical programming are discussed and a road map for developing chemical computing into a unifying and well grounded approach is sketched.