A Possible Nanometer-scale Computing Device Based on an Adding Cellular Automaton

Abstract

We present a simple one-dimensional Cellular Automaton (CA) which has the property that an initial state composed of two binary numbers evolves quickly into a final state which is their sum. We call this CA the Adding Cellular Automaton (ACA). The ACA requires only 2N two-state cells in order to add any two N-1 bit binary numbers. The ACA could be directly realized as a wireless nanometer-scale computing device - a possible implementation using coupled quantum dots is outlined.