Technology

To be clear though, the two defined states are separated by a voltage gap, so either it is on or off regardless of how on or how off. For example, if the off is 0V and the on is 5V then 4V is neither of those but will be either considered as on. So if it is above thecriticam threshold it is on and therefore represents a 1, otherwise it is a 0.

An analogue computer would be able to use all of the variable voltage range. This means that instead of having a whole bunch of gates working together to represent a number the voltage could be higher or lower. Something that takes 64 bits could be a single voltage. That would mean more processing in the same space and much less actual computation required.

The thing which makes digital chips so much better than analog chips is something both you and the article are missing: noise. A digital chip is very robust against noise, as long as the noise in one step isn't too big so it causes a bitflip immediately the stable configuration will pull the voltage level back and no information is lost. Not so with analog logic, since the information is continuous every step which introduces noice (which is basically every step) will cause loss of information. Go a few levels of logic deep and all you've got left is noise.

Digital systems are built on analog systems, as you observed. A continuous voltage range is reduced to two possible states: high voltage (the upper part of that range) and low voltage (the lower part of that range). Then, we design algorithms that manipulate these high/low voltages that only consider the two possibilities of either being high or low. Since we dont consider what the actual voltages are, just if they are high or low, we are doing digital computing, we are not taking full advantage of the analog potential of the physical objects we are using underneath the sheets.

This is an analog pc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_computer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum-tube_computer

It does seem to be talking about this, analog doesn't from my understanding use 1 or 0 as a representation. It is true that the cpu uses voltage as you stated, but what differentiates it from analog is that in analog the volatge isn't represented as 0 or 1 and is used as is in calculations.

They are not programmed, they are physically made to preform the calculation from my understanding, like for example the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

Here's a Veritasium video from 3 years ago about an American company making analog chips, explaining why they are so much more efficient in certain tasks. https://youtu.be/GVsUOuSjvcg

It is not an incremental improvement because it's a radically different approach. This is not like making a new CPU architecture or adding more IPC, it's doing computation in a whole different way, that is closer to a physical model using springs/gravity/gears/whatever to model something like the Antikythera mechanism or those water-based financial models than any digital computer.

Also, uncritically dismissing anything coming from China as a scam is not being resistant to Chinese propaganda, it's just falling for the US'.

“1000x faster?” Learn to lie better

Analogue computers are indeed capable of doing a task 1000x faster than a regular computer. The difference is they do only that task, in a very specific way, and with one specific type of output. You can 3D print at home an "analogue computer" that can solve calculus equations, it can technically be faster than a CPU, but that's the only thing it can do, it's complex, and the output is a drawing on paper.

If you come up with a repeatable and precise set of mechanical movements that are analogous to the problem you want to solve, you can indeed come up with headlines like that.

Because until it hits market, it’s almost meaningless. These journalists do the same shit with drugs in trials or early research.

I mean it‘s like the 10th time I‘m reading about THE breakthrough in Chinese chip production on Lemmy so lets just say I‘m not holding my breath LoL.

But it only does 16x16 matrix inversion.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41928-025-01477-0

Here's the paper published in Nature.

However, it's worth noting that Nature has had to retract studies before:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_(journal)#Retractions

From 2000 to 2001, a series of five fraudulent papers by Jan Hendrik Schön was published in Nature. The papers, about semiconductors, were revealed to contain falsified data and other scientific fraud. In 2003, Nature retracted the papers. The Schön scandal was not limited to Nature; other prominent journals, such as Science and Physical Review, also retracted papers by Schön.

Not saying that we shouldn't trust anything published in scientific journals, but yes, we should wait until more studies that replicate these results exist before jumping to conclusions.

Same here. I wait to see real life calculations done by such circuits. They won't be able to e.g. do a simple float addition without losing/mangling a bunch of digits.

But maybe the analog precision is sufficient for AI, which is an imprecise matter from the start.

Just push ever so slightly more when you hear the crunching sounds.

1000x yes!

You might benefit from watching Hinton's lecture; much of it details technical reasons why digital is much much better than analog for intelligent systems

BTW that is the opposite of what he set out to prove He says the facts forced him to change his mind

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IkdziSLYzHw

@carrylex @kalkulat If you zoom in, you will see that it is in fact a real photo. It's just someone who thought putting a CPU upside down was a good idea.

Which is worse - AI slop, or people decrying everything they see as AI slop, even when it isn't?