Conway's Game of Life in x64 Assembly

Why?

I made this as fun way to learn the basics of x64 assembly, gdb, and syscalls

How to run

sh run.sh <input file> # compiles and runs program
./gol < <input file>   # runs compuiled program

Two input files are provided already: gliderGun.txt and snark.txt (shown running above).

Requirements

• nasm must be installed to compile x64 assembly

Details

• Compiler: nasm x64 assembler
• Asm syntax: Intel x64
• Tested on: Linux Mint 22

Adding new patterns

Currently, all patterns must be provided as a text file containing a square grid of alive cells (#) and dead cells (space). For it to work properly, you must edit SIZE in gol.s to be equal to one more than the number of columns in your new pattern file.

Possible Future Additions (though I don't plan on it)

• Functions to follow x64 ABI conventions
• Ability to determine simulation size on runtime
• Ability to automaticaly pad the simulation space with empty cells
• Ability to manually step through the simulation