What is unconventional computing?
Unconventional computing is a science in flux. What is unconventional today will be conventional tomorrow. Designs being standard in the past are seen now as a novelty. Unconventional computing is a niche for interdisciplinary science, a crossbreed of computer science, physics, mathematics, chemistry, electronic engineering, biology, materials science and nanotechnology. The aims are to uncover and exploit principles and mechanisms of information processing in, and functional properties of, physical, chemical and living systems to develop efficient algorithms, design optimal architectures and manufacture working prototypes of future and emergent computing devices. The topics include physics of computation, molecular communication and computing, cellular automata, computing with slime mould, plants, bacterial colonies, complexity of computation, smart and functional materials for computing and sensing, mechanical computing, non-classical logics for computation.
Specific topics include but are not limited to:
- physics of computation (e.g. conservative logic, thermodynamics of computation, reversible computing, quantum computing, collision-based computing with solitons, optical logic)
- chemical computing (e.g. implementation of logical functions in chemical systems, image processing and pattern recognition in reaction-diffusion chemical systems and networks of chemical reactors)
- bio-molecular computing (e.g. conformation based, information processing in molecular arrays, molecular memory)
- cellular automata as models of massively parallel computing
- complexity (e.g. computational complexity of non-standard computer architectures; theory of amorphous computing; artificial chemistry)
- logics of unconventional computing (e.g. logical systems derived from space-time behavior of natural systems; non-classical logics; logical reasoning in physical, chemical and biological systems)
- smart actuators (e.g. molecular machines incorporating information processing, intelligent arrays of actuators)
- novel hardware systems (e.g. cellular automata VLSIs, functional neural chips)
- mechanical computing (e.g. micromechanical encryption, computing in nanomachines, physical limits to mechanical computation).
Both theoretical and experimental contributions are invited.