From evolving software towards models of dynamically self-assembling processing systems

Several types of micro-controllers are put into a primordial soup abstracted as a ring. The special feature of this setup is that self-replication is not possible. Microcontrollers only have access to foreign program-code not to their own. It turns out that the seeding programs vanish long before being able to proliferate when each program is automatically granted access to the neighboring code. An active attachment-procedure with a lock-and-key scheme (i.e. speci c binding) is required to allow an evolutionary start. As expected, the error-threshold [1] applies here as well. As a second step, these fully edged assembler programs are then partitioned into dynamical assembling pieces of simple linear program pieces essentially without any further control-structures but exhibiting the same functionality. Two di erent micro-controllers are studied under evolutionary conditions and longterm evolutionary behavior is investigated. A pathway towards the direct simulation of self-assembling nanoscale chemistry is opened.