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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hornischer, Levin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10184
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author Hornischer, Levin
author_facet Hornischer, Levin
contents Analog computation is an alternative to digital computation, that has recently re-gained prominence, since it includes neural networks and neuromorphic computing. Further important examples are cellular automata and differential analyzers. While analog computers offer many advantages, they lack a notion of universality akin to universal digital computers. Since analog computers are best formalized as dynamical systems, we review scattered results on universal dynamical systems. We identify four senses of universality and connect to the two main general theories of computation: coalgebra and domain theory. For nondeterministic systems, we construct a universal system as a Fraïssé limit. It not only is universal in many of the identified senses, it also is unique in additionally being homogeneous. For deterministic systems, a universal system cannot exist, but we provide a simple method for constructing subclasses of deterministic systems with a universal and homogeneous system. This way, we introduce sofic proshifts: those systems that are limits of sofic shifts. In fact, their universal and homogeneous system even is a limit of shifts of finite type and has the shadowing property.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_10184
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Universal Analog Computation: Fraïssé Limits of Dynamical Systems
Hornischer, Levin
Dynamical Systems
Primary 68Q09, 37B10, secondary 18A35, 03C30
Analog computation is an alternative to digital computation, that has recently re-gained prominence, since it includes neural networks and neuromorphic computing. Further important examples are cellular automata and differential analyzers. While analog computers offer many advantages, they lack a notion of universality akin to universal digital computers. Since analog computers are best formalized as dynamical systems, we review scattered results on universal dynamical systems. We identify four senses of universality and connect to the two main general theories of computation: coalgebra and domain theory. For nondeterministic systems, we construct a universal system as a Fraïssé limit. It not only is universal in many of the identified senses, it also is unique in additionally being homogeneous. For deterministic systems, a universal system cannot exist, but we provide a simple method for constructing subclasses of deterministic systems with a universal and homogeneous system. This way, we introduce sofic proshifts: those systems that are limits of sofic shifts. In fact, their universal and homogeneous system even is a limit of shifts of finite type and has the shadowing property.
title Universal Analog Computation: Fraïssé Limits of Dynamical Systems
topic Dynamical Systems
Primary 68Q09, 37B10, secondary 18A35, 03C30
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10184