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Analog computers still crop up in all sorts of places these days but have become very niche and are typically a small part of an otherwise larger system. It's
by Junk_Collector 8y ago
Analog computers still crop up in all sorts of places these days but have become very niche and are typically a small part of an otherwise larger system. It's rare to see a general purpose analog computer outside of a very small number of research labs and FPAAs exist but are expensive novelties. As digital processors continue to get better and we develop better ways to work with them, there just isn't the need for the cost and effort required to make analog computers.
Some common places where you might see one is in audio driver amplifiers where it is common to implement a bit of trans-linear logic at the output stage to reduce distortion. Same in some high quality power supplies.
Sometimes very high performance sensor systems will have an analog pre-processor to perform some calculation on the incoming signal before handing it off to the digitizers and DSP. Think multi-microphone arrays.