It's deterministic, though, so once it detects a repeated global state it will cycle endlessly so you're not calculating generation N, you're calculating genera

It's deterministic, though, so once it detects a repeated global state it will cycle endlessly so you're not calculating generation N, you're calculating generation firstOccurrence+N*cycleLength for all N. At least, this line from the wiki reads to me like this is what's happening: > Computed by detecting a repeating cycle in the pattern, and skipping ahead to any requested generation.