A cellular automaton is a discrete model of computation studied in automata theory.

It consists of a regular grid of cells, each in one of a finite number of states; a new generation is created according to some fixed rule that determines the new state of each cell in terms of the current state of the cell and its neighborhood.

Typically, the rule for updating the state of cells is the same for each cell and does not change over time, and is applied to the whole grid simultaneously, though exceptions are known, such as the stochastic cellular automaton and asynchronous cellular automaton.

A well-known cellular automaton is Conway’s Game of Life.