Figure 1 - Structure of the Network Ancestor. The thick box to the left, and the thick black line, are the 320 byte genome. The medium thick box near the center is a 512 byte data area, divided evenly into eight sixty-four byte areas, for holding eight blocks of TPing sensory data. The thin line on the right is a 128 byte unused area.
Figure 2 - Genetic Map of the Network Ancestor. The genome of the network ancestor has been subdivided into six major ``genes'', three of which have been further divided into subunits. The numbers indicate the size, in bytes, of each of the genes or subunits. At the right end is a 27 byte unexpressed region. The six major genes are: sel self-examination, dif differentiation, rep reproduction, cop data copy, dev development, and sen sensory. The rep gene has been subdivided into: repS reproduction setup and repL reproduction loop. The cop gene has been subdivided into: copS copy setup, copL copy loop, and copC copy cleanup. The sen gene has been subdivided into: senS sensory setup, senO sensory processing coordination, senY sensory system synchronization, senA sensory data analysis, and senR sensory data report.
Figure 3 - Deterministic Cell Lineage of the Network Ancestor. The column of numbers near the left shows time, in (parallel) CPU cycles. In one parallel CPU cycle, all CPUs (cells) execute one machine instruction. The three or four letter codes along the left and right indicate the genes active at a particular time. The horizontal dashed lines indicate the times of transition between the expression of different genes. For example, at time 10, the execution of the sel gene ends, and the execution of the dif gene begins. The sequence of gene expression differs between the reproductive tissue (on the left) and the sensory tissue (on the right). At time 15, the two undifferentiated cells differentiate, with the cell on the left (R) committing to the reproductive tissue, and the cell on the right (S) committing to the sensory tissue. After time 52, the eight sensory cells are illustrated as dotted lines, because their behavior, including cell death or further cell division, depends on the information in the sensory data that they acquire.
Figure 4 - Sensory Data Reduction in the Network Ancestor. The 512 byte data area holds eight sixty-four byte TPing data structures. These are compared and reduced to the single best structure (based on the highest ratio of Speed/NumCells) through a series of three pair-wise comparisons and conditional data copies. After this process, the best looking data appears in the left-most data block.
Figure 5 - Sensory Cycle Cell Lineage in the Network Ancestor. The numbers indicate the timing of events, in parallel CPU cycles, and horizontal dashed lines indicate the transitions between the expression of different genes, which are named on the right. In a series of three pair-wise comparisons, the best data is moved into the left-most block of the data area. In each comparison, when the data on the right is favored, it is copied. In these cases, the cell divides into a tissue of eight cells to copy the data. This is illustrated in the right two cells of the first comparison (time 157-219), both cells of the second comparison (303-365) and the single cell of the third and last comparison (448-510).
Figure 6 - Variation of Speed on One Node. The horizontal axis shows time in hours. The vertical axis shows speed in instructions per second. The Speed drops to zero when the user is active. This machine was at the Santa Fe Institute.
Figure 7 - Variation of Speed over 48 hours on 148 nodes. Histogram of the distribution of Speed over a 48 hour period on a network of 148 machines. These values were collected after every million instructions executed on our point of view node (at ATR), from all the other nodes in the network. This generated 504,589 values of Speed data, of which 188,594 (37%) were zero values.
Figure 8 - Close-up Genetic Map of the Descendant 8313aaa. The expressed genes are shown as vertical boxes/lines, unexpressed code as a thick horizontal line. A discontinuity of scale is shown on the right with the broken horizontal line. As in Figure 2, the numbers indicate the size, in bytes, of the various regions.
Figure 9 - Deterministic Cell Lineage of the Descendant 8313aaa. As in Figure 3, the numbers indicate the timing of events, and horizontal dashed lines indicate the transitions between the expression of different genes, which are named on the right. The vertical dotted line indicates that the configuration of 256 CPUs continues unchanged until time 202.
