# Hashlife > **Machine-Evolution Nexus:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] places this node within the history and governance of substrate-independent evolution. **Domain:** Algorithms / Cellular Automata **Doc Type:** Canonical Wiki Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition Hashlife is a memoizing algorithm for accelerating cellular-automaton simulation by caching and reusing the evolution of repeated spatial patterns. ## Nexus Context It enabled Hutton and other researchers to work at scales where cell-by-cell simulation would be impractical, making an otherwise invisible replication process computationally accessible. ## Evidence Boundary Acceleration depends on repeated structure and compatible rules; it does not make every large cellular automaton tractable or permit direct observation of every step. ## Relationships [[wiki/Tim Hutton|Tim Hutton]], [[wiki/Golly|Golly]], [[wiki/Cellular Automata|Cellular Automata]], [[wiki/Scalar Nesting|Scalar Nesting]] ## Sources / Provenance - Bill Gosper’s Hashlife method; Golly documentation; Hutton (2010).