The Swarm Computer, an analog cellular-swarm hybrid architecture

The “killer apps” of cellular and swarm computing are image processing and optimization, respectively; however, applying these platforms to general-purpose computing remains impractical. Designing systems within the restrictive framework of cellular automata is extremely difficult, though often very efficient and scalable. On the other hand, swarm networks are very powerful but difficult to implement in hardware. Here we introduce a hybrid model, the Swarm Computer, which is both practical to program and efficient to implement. Applications in astrophysics and image processing are considered.