Abstract
A totalistic Ising cellular automaton (ICA) is proposed which can reproduce the thermodynamics of the Ising model. The automaton rules are preset in the usual way but some random mixing of these existing rules is subsequently permitted. The model employs a vectorized multispin coding algorithm to reach spin updating speeds comparable with the best Metropolis Monte Carlo performances and is characterized by a nonlinear dynamical critical exponent whose value seems less than two.