4 ms·

I always hear such things from EE's. So, what's your thoughts on stuff like this in terms of analog "always" being more expensive or power hungry: http://www.c

I always hear such things from EE's. So, what's your thoughts on stuff like this in terms of analog "always" being more expensive or power hungry: http://www.cisl.columbia.edu/grads/gcowan/vlsianalog.pdf http://www.cisl.columbia.edu/grads/gcowan/vlsianalog.pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.325.4142&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.325... Now, I won't argue with cheaper to develop since analog is manual with a lot of issues to contend with. I'm just wondering if there are more applications that can get huge speedups at lower power or cost than digital. I know the ASIC makers in power-sensitive spaces are already moving parts of their chips to analog for power reduction. That's what mixed-signal people tell me anyway: the specifics are often secret. So, I have to dig into CompSci looking for what they've tried.

pjc50 9y ago
The analogue neural net stuff is quite a reasonable example, because it's specifically trying to mimic a real analogue system and tends to be noise-tolerant. Couple of points from your lower link: - return of "wafer-scale"! Nice. - " the average power consumption is expected to stay below 1 kW for a single wafer"; not bad but you're still going to need to cool that - actually a hybrid system: long range comms is digital and multiplexed to save wiring, converted to analogue at the synapse - "All analog parameters are stored in non-volatile single-poly floating-gate analog storage cells developed for the FACETS project" => basically analogue Flash? A development of MLC I suppose On reading the whole thing, it seems the magic is actually in choosing which bits to make digital. The "long range" neural events are sent as differential 6-bit bursts, multiplexed, which they claim saves significant power.
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pjc50 9y ago

The analogue neural net stuff is quite a reasonable example, because it's specifically trying to mimic a real analogue system and tends to be noise-tolerant. Couple of points from your lower link: - return of "wafer-scale"! Nice. - " the average power consumption is expected to stay below 1 kW for a single wafer"; not bad but you're still going to need to cool that - actually a hybrid system: long range comms is digital and multiplexed to save wiring, converted to analogue at the synapse - "All analog parameters are stored in non-volatile single-poly floating-gate analog storage cells developed for the FACETS project" => basically analogue Flash? A development of MLC I suppose On reading the whole thing, it seems the magic is actually in choosing which bits to make digital. The "long range" neural events are sent as differential 6-bit bursts, multiplexed, which they claim saves significant power.

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