[HN Gopher] Reconfigurable Analog Computers
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       Reconfigurable Analog Computers
        
       Author : gidellav
       Score  : 16 points
       Date   : 2025-11-01 18:03 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (arxiv.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org)
        
       | Marshferm wrote:
       | Ullmann to the rescue. We're indifferent to analog computers like
       | Detroit was once with electric cars.
        
         | Locutus_ wrote:
         | Ahhh, Vaxman still up to his usual shenannigans :-)
        
           | Marshferm wrote:
           | Imagine that, a self-organizing, self-learning software that
           | builds its own hardware. Even dumb primates like us can build
           | 'em!
        
       | Animats wrote:
       | The article mention EAI's SIMSTAR, a real software reconfigurable
       | analog computer from the 1980s. Here's a description of how that
       | worked.[1] This was pretty good. They had a crosspoint of FET
       | analog switches to pass signals around, so they managed to do
       | this in solid state, without relays. They had a M68000 as a
       | control machine to set up connections. It all worked well enough
       | to allow a real time man-in-the-loop simulation of the F-16
       | control system.[2] Just barely. The USAF paper says that the
       | biggest problem was keeping the SIMSTAR analog computers alive.
       | 
       | Analog FPGAs have been made, downsizing this sort of thing to
       | chip size. But not recently. The problems seem to be 1) lack of a
       | use case, and 2) noise.
       | 
       | Analog computing is all about noise minimization. This is Not
       | Fun.
       | 
       | There's interest in this stuff for neural nets, which do a lot of
       | clipping and may be less noise-sensitive.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.analogmuseum.org/library/simstar_technology.pdf
       | 
       | [2] https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA189675.pdf
        
         | buildbot wrote:
         | Does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_PSoC Count? I've
         | kinda wanted to try one out but have 0 use case...
        
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       (page generated 2025-11-01 23:00 UTC)