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> Did you know that on an analog machine, you can do sort in O(n)? Can it sort names or addresses? Otherwise for integers you don't have buy spaghetti and jus
by rdtsc 9y ago
> Did you know that on an analog machine, you can do sort in O(n)?
Can it sort names or addresses?
Otherwise for integers you don't have buy spaghetti and just use a computer to do a radix sort which is O(nw).
Another thing with analog computers is to think how they scale. I can sort 1M items on my laptop. What is the practical application of buying 1M strands of spaghetti.
- adamnemecek 9y ago> Can it sort names or addresses? Why couldn't it? Ideally they can represent real numbers with infinite precision which are identical to strings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_computation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_computation But even in non-real computation this shouldn't be a problem, the same way you can sort strings even though you have only 32/64 bits of memory at a time if that's what you are hinting at. > Another thing with analog computers is to think how they scale. I don't think that scale has ever been a problem for analog computers.
- rdtsc 9y ago> I don't think that scale has ever been a problem for analog computers. I'd think an array of 1B spaghetti strands might pose a few difficulties above what sorting those numbers on computers would.
- adamnemecek 9y agoI can't tell if you are joking or not. You don't actually think there's 1B spaghetti right?
- rdtsc 9y agoNot actual pasta, no but there would have to be an analog equivalent. How do you see a practical implementation of this working that still preserves the O(n) property
- adamnemecek 9y agoThere's several way of achieving computation in this scheme. I'm not quite settled on which of these is the best. But why do you think that this property would be translated when going from electric to photonic?