Arithmetic computation in the tile assembly model: Addition and multiplication

  • Authors:
  • Yuriy Brun

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computer Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-2910, United States

  • Venue:
  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

Formalized study of self-assembly has led to the definition of the tile assembly model [Erik Winfree, Algorithmic self-assembly of DNA, Ph.D. Thesis, Caltech, Pasadena, CA, June 1998; Paul Rothemund, Erik Winfree, The program-size complexity of self-assembled squares, in: ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, STOC02, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 2001, pp. 459-468]. Research has identified two issues at the heart of self-assembling systems: the number of steps it takes for an assembly to complete, assuming maximum parallelism, and the minimal number of tiles necessary to assemble a shape. In this paper, I define the notion of a tile assembly system that computes a function, and tackle these issues for systems that compute the sum and product of two numbers. I demonstrate constructions of such systems with optimal @Q(1) distinct tile types and prove the assembly time is linear in the size of the input.