Perturbing the topology of the Game of Life increases its robustness to asynchrony

Abstract

An experimental analysis of the asynchronous version of the "Game of Life" is performed to estimate how topology perturbations modify its evolution. We focus on the study of a phase transition from an "inactive-sparse phase" to a "labyrinth phase" and produce experimental data to quantify these changes as a function of the density of the initial configuration, the value of the synchrony rate, and the topology missing-link rate. An interpretation of the experimental results is given using the hypothesis that initial "germs" colonize the whole lattice and the validity of this hypothesis is tested.