  This paper presents a new framework for asynchrony. This has its origins in
our attempts to better harness the internal decision making process of cellular
automata (CA). Thus, we show that a max-plus algebraic model of asynchrony
arises naturally from the CA requirement that a cell receives the state of each
neighbour before updating. The significant result is the existence of a
bijective mapping between the asynchronous system and the synchronous system
classically used to update cellular automata. Consequently, although the CA
outputs look qualitatively different, when surveyed on "contours" of real time,
the asynchronous CA replicates the synchronous CA. Moreover, this type of
asynchrony is simple - it is characterised by the underlying network structure
of the cells, and long-term behaviour is deterministic and periodic due to the
linearity of max-plus algebra. The findings lead us to proffer max-plus algebra
as: (i) a more accurate and efficient underlying timing mechanism for models of
patterns seen in nature, and (ii) a foundation for promising extensions and
applications.
