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It is well-known that Abstract State Machines (ASMs) can simulate ``step-by-step" any type of machines (Turing machines, RAMs, etc.). We aim to overcome two facts: 1) simulation is not identification, 2) the ASMs simulating machines of some type do not constitute a natural class among all ASMs. We modify Gurevich's notion of ASM to that of EMA (``Evolving MultiAlgebra") by replacing the program (which is a syntactic object) by a semantic object: a functional which has to be very simply definable over the static part of the ASM. We prove that very natural classes of EMAs correspond via ``literal identifications'' to slight extensions of the usual machine models and also to grammar models. Though we modify these models,we keep their computation approach: only some contingencies are modified. Thus, EMAs appear as the mathematical model unifying all kinds of sequential computation paradigms.
@InProceedings{grigorieff_et_al:LIPIcs.STACS.2010.2473,
author = {Grigorieff, Serge and Valarcher, Pierre},
title = {{Evolving Multialgebras Unify All Usual Sequential Computation Models}},
booktitle = {27th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science},
pages = {417--428},
series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
ISBN = {978-3-939897-16-3},
ISSN = {1868-8969},
year = {2010},
volume = {5},
editor = {Marion, Jean-Yves and Schwentick, Thomas},
publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
address = {Dagstuhl, Germany},
URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2010.2473},
URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-24737},
doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2010.2473},
annote = {Keywords: Abstract state machines, Models of machines, Computability, Universality, Logic in computer science, Theory of algorithms}
}