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Re:A Turing Machine built using LEGO by Tichy on Tuesday June 19, 2012 @12:55PM (#4132820)
Still, I am not sure how big other physical computers are (do any even exist)? I think it's cool :-)

Is there a compiler for it? :-)

Re:A Turing Machine built using LEGO by srimech on Tuesday June 19, 2012 @04:43PM (#4134053)
It calculates a cellular automata called Rule 110 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110) which is very difficult to code for. I've seen a paper which shows a method for coding any Turing machine into rule 110, but most of it is beyond my mathematical ability at the moment. So far as I know nothing resembling a normal compiler exists for it.

It's actually much simpler to make a mechanical implementation of rule 110 directly, but Turing machines are more widely recognised.