Polynomial cellular neural networks for implementing the game of life

One-layer space-invariant Cellular Neural Networks (CNNs) are widely appreciated for their simplicity and versatility; however, such structures are not able to solve non-linearly separable problems. In this paper we show that a polynomial CNN - that has with a direct VLSI implementation - is capable of dealing with the 'Game of Life', a Cellular Automaton with the same computational complexity as a Turing machine. Furthermore, we describe a simple design algorithm that allows to convert the rules of a Cellular Automaton into the weights of a polynomial CNN.