Communications of the ACM
The limitations to delay-insensitivity in asynchronous circuits
AUSCRYPT '90 Proceedings of the sixth MIT conference on Advanced research in VLSI
An asynchronous two-dimensional self-correcting cellular automaton
SFCS '91 Proceedings of the 32nd annual symposium on Foundations of computer science
Nanosystems: molecular machinery, manufacturing, and computation
Nanosystems: molecular machinery, manufacturing, and computation
On the Delay-Sensitivity of Gate Networks
IEEE Transactions on Computers
Spatial Computing on Self-Timed Cellular Automata
UMC '00 Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Unconventional Models of Computation
Cellular Automata
Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata
Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata
Reversible Computation in Asynchronous Cellular Automata
UMC '02 Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Unconventional Models of Computation
Construction universality in purely asynchronous cellular automata
Journal of Computer and System Sciences
Defect-tolerance in cellular nanocomputers
New Generation Computing
ACRI '08 Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Cellular Automata for Reseach and Industry
Pursue robust indefinite scalability
HotOS'13 Proceedings of the 13th USENIX conference on Hot topics in operating systems
Robustness of cellular automata in the light of asynchronous information transmission
UC'11 Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Unconventional computation
Online marking of defective cells by random flies
ACRI'06 Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Cellular Automata for Research and Industry
Probing robustness of cellular automata through variations of asynchronous updating
Natural Computing: an international journal
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This paper describes a novel type of Asynchronous Cellular Automata, in which transitions of cells only take place when triggered by transitions of their neighboring cells. Called Self-Timed Cellular Automaton (STCA), the model offers control over its cells' operations to the same degree as in Synchronous Cellular Automata, while at the same time offers the flexibility of its purely asynchronous counterparts. We implement some simple functionalities on STCA, like wires, crossings of wires, and NAND-gates, and show that a Synchronous Cellular Automaton with N states can be simulated by an STCA with O(N√N) states in linear time. This establishes the computational universality of STCA, since Synchronous Cellular Automata can, if properly designed, embed universal Turing Machines. The STCA model offers promise for the realization of Cellular Automaton-based computers with logic devices and wires on the molecular scale, a technology that is expected to take off in 10-15 years. In this context, self-timing is especially useful for its compatibility with the asynchronous behavior of molecules, and for avoiding delay problems associated with a central clock.