  The study of factoring relations between subshifts or cellular automata is
central in symbolic dynamics. Besides, a notion of intrinsic universality for
cellular automata based on an operation of rescaling is receiving more and more
attention in the literature. In this paper, we propose to study the factoring
relation up to rescalings, and ask for the existence of universal objects for
that simulation relation. In classical simulations of a system S by a system T,
the simulation takes place on a specific subset of configurations of T
depending on S (this is the case for intrinsic universality). Our setting,
however, asks for every configurations of T to have a meaningful interpretation
in S. Despite this strong requirement, we show that there exists a cellular
automaton able to simulate any other in a large class containing arbitrarily
complex ones. We also consider the case of subshifts and, using arguments from
recursion theory, we give negative results about the existence of universal
objects in some classes.

Discrete Mathematics;Cellular Automata and Lattice Gases