Implementation of Logical Functions in the Game of Life

The Game of Life cellular automaton is a classical example of a massively parallel collision-based computing device. The automaton exhibits mobile patterns, gliders, and generators of the mobile patterns, glider guns, in its evolution. We show how to construct basic logical operations, AND, OR, NOT in space-time configurations of the cellular automaton. Also decomposition of complicated Boolean functions is discussed. Advantages of our technique are demonstrated on an example of binary adder, realized via collision of gliders’ streams.