Comment on China solves 'century-old problem' with new analog chip that is 1,000 times faster than high-end Nvidia GPUs

• Treczoks@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I know. My point was that this is horribly imprecise, even if their circuits are exceptionally good.

  There is a reason why all other chips run digital…

  source

  • floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    How is it imprecise? It’s the same thing as taking two containers of water and pouring them into a third one. It will contain the sum of the precious two exactly. Or if you use gears to simulate orbits. Rounding errors are a digital thing.

    Analog has its own set of issues (e.g. noise, losses, repeatability), but precision is not one of them. Arguably, the main reason digital took over is because it’s programmable and it’s good for general computing. Turing completeness means you can do anything if you throw enough memory and time at it, while analog circuits are purpose-made

    source

    • Treczoks@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      So you list the reasons for imprecision: noise, losses, repeatability problems (there are more), but still consider it precise?

      Adding two containers of water is only as precise as you can get leakage under control, and can rely on a repeatable shape of the containers. Both is something chip level logic simply does not deliver.

      source