Fighting fork bombs in a visual address space
This program implements a simple assembly language interpreter that runs using an image as memory. Each executing program has an X/Y origin in the image, and a spiraling address space around it.
The current seed program performs these operations:
- Push ~7KB of random data to the stack, favoring red/green/blue colors
- Copy the current program to a random location in the image, by manipulating the stack pointers
- Spawn a new execution at the new location
- Resume pushing random data to the local stack
The resulting behavior is effectively a fork bomb, where programs are fighting for memory (image) space. As the execution continues, programs will be overwritten with random data and mutate. The simulation has a limit set for 100 concurrent programs, since too many threads will slow down the rendering.
Some interesting observations that can be made:
- The average color on screen tends to shift over time as programs mutate
- Smaller replicating programs are favored due to their smaller footprint and replication speed.
- Occationally horizontal lines are generated in the image, which is not an easy operation given the instruction set. While this is theoretically possible, it may be a bug in the implementation.
