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WOLFRAM|DEMONSTRATIONS PROJECT

Classifying the Complexity and Information of Cellular Automata

​
complexity
view
classification
information
rule 0
rule 248
rule 32

Cellular automata (CA) can be classified according to the complexity and information produced by the behavior of the CA pattern:

Class 1: Fixed; all cells converge to a constant black or white set
​Class 2: Periodic; repeats the same pattern, like a loop
​Class 3: Chaotic; pseudo-random
​Class 4: Complex local structures; exhibits behaviors of both class 2 and
class 3; likely to support universal computation

From the set of
2
8
=256
possible elementary CA rules, three rules were previously (manually) selected as examples for patterns of CA classes, with random initial condition.