Turing Machines
Alan Turing's "Turing machines" provide for a universal notion of computation. Wolfram|Alpha simulates, analyzes and gives information about the rule space of many Turing machines. It also creates interactive visualizations, including network visualizations, of the evolution of Turing machines. Specify a rule number or explicit rule or just give a number of states and colors for a random sample.
Investigate this simple model of a computer with simulations, analysis and visualizations.
Specify a Turing machine by number or rule:
Include the number of colors and states in a query:
Choose a Turing machine at random:
Specify a famous Turing machine:
Dive deep into the time evolution of a Turing machine, view only every nth slice of time or view only the steps where the head reaches the far left, right or center of the tape.
Specify a number of steps:
Specify a range of steps:
Uniformly compress time:
Retain only "interesting" steps:
Specify the initial conditions of a Turing machine, both its state and tape. Set the width of the tape and seed it with random, constant and/or repeating initial values.