For HashLife, I think the chief problems are around an efficient cache, and especially efficient canonicalization. The algorithm is so fast for universes that s

For HashLife, I think the chief problems are around an efficient cache, and especially efficient canonicalization. The algorithm is so fast for universes that suit its domain that I think most other considerations drop by the wayside. However, besides the fact that not all problems have enough redundancy in time+space to suit it, it also suffers from the fact that it is most efficient when computing massive jumps in generations. So it’s as not as performant for creating animations as it is for doing things like finding the maximum size of a pattern, calculating its growth rate, and so forth.