9 ms·
Microprocessors Running on Air?
- systemvoltage 6y agoThere is a sense of romanticization of "analog" computing. With air/fluids, with all kinds of techniques. This is nothing new as Scott Aaronson points out. Usually, these ideas tend to be novel (cool), but almost like one of those new perpetual machine ideas we constantly keep hearing about. Quoting Scott: > It’s important to realize that the idea of solving NP-complete problems in polynomial time using an analog device is far from new: computer scientists discussed such ideas extensively in the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, the whole point of my NP-complete Problems and Physical Reality paper was to survey the history of such attempts, and (hopefully!) to serve as a prophylactic against people making more such attempts without understanding the history. For computer scientists ultimately came to realize that all proposals along these lines simply “smuggle the exponentiality” somewhere that isn’t being explicitly considered, exactly like all proposals for perpetual-motion machines smuggle the entropy increase somewhere that isn’t being explicitly considered. With the exception of Quantum Computers, but in limited cases, quoting Scott: > (Incidentally, quantum computing is interesting precisely because, out of all “post-Extended-Church-Turing” computing proposals, it’s the only one for which we can’t articulate a clear physical reason why it won’t scale, analogous to the reasons given above for memcomputing. With quantum computing the tables are turned, with the skeptics forced to handwave about present-day practicalities, while the proponents wield the sharp steel of accepted physical law. But as readers of this blog well know, quantum computing doesn’t seem to promise the polynomial-time solution of NP-complete problems, only of more specialized problems.) https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2212 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2212 From listening to Scott for many years, I don't have the expertise in this area to say it definitively, but most likely, your cool new analog computing idea isn't going to break the RSA anytime soon ;) Further reading: https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec14.html https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec14.html
- Ultimatt 6y agoThe suggestion is not an analogue computer at all. Did you read the article? But a digital computer produced from a different medium. Microfluidics is already being used in a really serious way in engineering automation of most biomolecular tech. Especially the latest generations of DNA sequencing machines. There the advantage of fluidics is you can mix and match the macroscopic logic domain with biomolecular function in a liquid phase.
- Apocryphon 6y agoThere's also photonic circuits, and molecular electronics.
- systemvoltage 6y agoMy comment was general, not to do with the article except for the title :) I couldn't open it and asks for a login account with Medium.
- im3w1l 6y agoFirst, cracking RSA is not believed to be NP complete. Second, even if it were, an analog computer could in theory provide a large constant factor speed up that would break current key sizes. But still, it seems very unlikely that an analog computer breaks RSA.
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago> The human brain operates at a measly 30 Hz. Still the human brain outperforms almost every computer. It has been calculated that the human brain has a processing power of 6 peta flops. That is six million billion calculations per second. Which compares favorably to the worlds fastest super computer This caught my eye. It seems entirely too simplistic to claim the brain has a "hz" value/directly compare to traditional computing, doing some research, but anyone more knowledgeable on this?
- stingraycharles 6y agoIt is too simplistic, heck, even for CPUs the executions are often in parallel, out of order, whatnot, depending on the type of task that needs to be performed. The same is the case with the human brain. I’d say that they probably took the simplest task possible and see how fast the human brain could do that and ended up with 30Hz. Seems like a very silly thing to me.
- socialdemocrat 6y agoNo it is based on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_rhythm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_rhythm The human brain obviously works in parallel but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have something akin to a clock frequency. There is a limit to how quickly signals can propagate through the brain.
- greyface- 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_wave
- socialdemocrat 6y agoIt links to an article and wikipedia article which explains it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_rhythm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_rhythm https://patrickjuli.us/2016/04/06/what-is-the-processing-power-of-the-human-brain/ https://patrickjuli.us/2016/04/06/what-is-the-processing-pow... It is based on the fastest neurologic rhythms in the human brain.
- 1-6 6y agoI wonder if similar rules apply with microfluidics. The idea of solid-states have fascinated me.
- trollied 6y agoStanford have demonstrated a small water droplet based circuit: https://youtu.be/m5WodTppevo https://youtu.be/m5WodTppevo
- dfgdsagf 6y agoOne used example is a rover on the Venus because fluidics would keep working at the high temperatures. I really wonder, how one would implement cameras, radar, or lidar for navigation and the radio uplink for remote control without using electronics.
- mikewarot 6y agoYou would use magnetic logic. There are materials that can function as core memory, even at the temperatures of the surface, what is little known is that cores can also serve as logic units (NOR, NAND, etc) if they are given a suitable clock drive. This clock signal could be generated with an alternator driven by the wind on the surface.
- socialdemocrat 6y agoAll that is explained in the linked article if you read it: https://erik-engheim.medium.com/making-a-non-electric-rover-for-the-venus-planetary-surface-25e01e5ddbab https://erik-engheim.medium.com/making-a-non-electric-rover-... Fluidics can run amplifiers for acoustic signals, which you can use for transmission. Seeing can be done like bats. Article gets into the details.
- VLM 6y agoTwo other apps for fluidics from the old days were nuclear reactors which are full of hyper-purified water and implantables in the body like maybe your internal insulin pump in the year 2050 would have an insulin dosing program written in fluid mechanics of blood powered by blood pressure. If we could just find a problem for the fluidics solution... Kinda like lasers in 1960, it works so now what do we do with it? The other interesting fluidics note is its been popular in hard sci fi for decades (well, for certain very small values of popular). The problem with fluidics is you need a pretty big digital computer to optimize the fluid mechanics and fancy digital computers to run the CNC machines to carve out the 3-d shapes. But if you could be VERY patient to do the calculations by hand and find a way to make the processors using 2-d photolithography maybe space aliens would have a fluidic technology. Another interesting note is this scales by size and speed of sound in liquid so its always going to be slower than photonics or electronics. But, the computational power to do "stuff" seems to scale on a power law so the invisible hand of cheapness means your smart thermostat for a hydronic hot water heating system would inevitably be fluidic in nature given an infinite number of years of market pressure. Yeah, a "big easy to mess with by hand" system is as slow as a pocket calculator, but we sold the world a heck of a lot of pocket calculators over the decades and if you shrink the dimensions by a million and increase pressure modestly and you could run a fluidic cell phone, perhaps.
- ggm 6y agoI saw an air pressure analog computer in Leeds, in the early 1980s. Programs were stored on giant plug boards the size of a wall map, about six inches thick, and it looked amazing. They used it for modelling air-conditioning and other things in an architecture school, fluid dynamics stuff. I've also seen the liquid model of the economy. I have a copy of Svoboda on 3 bar linkage computing in the MIT radiation labs series, published in the post war period. All the examples look to be flight and ballistics related, I guess these kinds of things were used for bomb and gun aiming, and radar.
- thedrbrian 6y agoNot quite the same but there’s a fascinating podcast about analogue computers on Omega Tau/Bernd Ulmann who runs the Analog Computer Museum near Wiesbaden, Germany. http://omegataupodcast.net/159-analog-computers/ http://omegataupodcast.net/159-analog-computers/
- meekrohprocess 6y agoReminds me of a scene from Cryptonomicon that may or may not have been inspired by history. It describes the RAM from a fictionalized 1940s computer: >The pipes are laid out horizontally, like a rank of organ pipes that has been knocked flat. Stuck into one end of each pipe is a little paper speaker ripped from an old radio. >“The speaker plays a signal—a note—that resonates in the pipe, and creates a standing wave,” Waterhouse says. “That means that in some parts of the pipe, the air pressure is low, and in other parts it is high.” He is backing down the length of one of the pipes, making chopping motions with his hand. “These U-tubes are full of mercury.” He points to one of several U-shaped glass tubes that are plumbed into the bottom of the long pipe. >[...] >“If the air pressure in the organ pipe is high, it pushes the mercury down a little bit. If it’s low, it sucks the mercury up. I put an electrical contact into each U-tube—just a couple of wires separated by an air gap. If those wires are high and dry (like because high air pressure in the organ pipe is shoving the mercury down away from them), no current flows. But if they are immersed in the mercury (because low air pressure in the organ pipe is sucking the mercury up to cover them), then current flows between them, because mercury conducts electricity! So the U-tubes produce a set of binary digits that is like a picture of the standing wave—a graph of the harmonics that make up the musical note that is being played on the speaker. We feed that vector back to the oscillator circuit that is driving the speaker, so that the vector of bits keeps refreshing itself forever, unless the machine decides to write a new pattern of bits into it.” Mechanical computing in general is fascinating. People also used to use precisely-machined drums and cams to perform complex realtime calculations.
- nullc 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_line_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_line_memory
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- m4rtink 6y agoFrom what I've heard this was really sensitive to any changes in environment - temperature, vibration or possibly even air pressure. All of which were likely to change where you were about to demonstrate your new mainframe to a delegation of important people! :-) IIRC it was even named "the general syndrome" in some places.
- Prcmaker 6y agoI'm thoroughly irked by blog posts like this. Fluidics and microfluidics are still an area of active research. Useless pondering that because of parallelism, fluidic based computers could be viable in practical application. The inference that because Amish people use air for tools, as do many others, that is somehow special. Articles like this smell to me of useless 'what if'. It is one thing to dream, but this steps past that and presents no real useful input. I've enjoyed making microfluidics in the past, and hope to make more in the future, but 'hey do it in parallel' isn't useful, its obvious.
- foerbert 6y agoI think you have misinterpreted the intended audience. It seems to me it's clearly intended as "hey, did you know this was a thing?" for a passing yet curious layman. It rather briefly covers the main basics questions one might have after hearing first being exposed to this idea. What even is it? Computation. With fluid. Is it possible? Water jet example. Okay but seriously, is it practically possible? Parallelism, so sure. Is it useful? Venus. I don't see how the main point of this blog post could possibly be parallelism. It's mentioned, but in about as much detail as all of the other topics I listed above. The whole thing is also so simplistic that I don't see how it could possibly be targeted at people with actual knowledge - never mind experience - in the field.
- Prcmaker 6y agoI understand writing for an audience, yet at the same the article is painfully erratic in its contents. It reminds me of writing stories with my kid. We're going to the pool, by the way there's a dragon, and that's why I should stay up late tonight.
- foerbert 6y agoIt didn't come across that way to me. I suspect familiarity with the topic is to blame here. As I mentioned, it basically went through and gave a short answer to all the first common questions you see in any discussion about a new technology. What is it? Does it work? Does it actually work in practice? What do you do with it? For somebody first exposed to the topic, that's kind of the basic starting point. The post kind of directly went from one answer to the next. As I was reading it the post felt pretty natural. But if you already know all that and are instead reading for more detailed knowledge, yeah I can see why that might seem particularly erratic. It was probably kind of like reading a Q&A without any of the Qs.
- imvetri 6y agoFluid computing within a simulated environment in modern computer will help me to build neural fluids.
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- bschne 6y agoHa, this reminded me of Ted Chiang's short story "Exhalation" — great read! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhalation_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhalation_(short_story)
- Gravityloss 6y agoTantalum wires, a less known altetnative to transistors: https://hackaday.com/2014/04/15/retrotechtacular-the-cryotron-computer/ https://hackaday.com/2014/04/15/retrotechtacular-the-cryotro...
- phonebucket 6y agoI love the idea of writing a Navier Stokes simulation on a fluidic based processor.
- gspr 6y agoHere's a water-based 3-bit adder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qP9HfUOCN4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qP9HfUOCN4
- hahamrfunnyguy 6y agoAs I was reading this, I immediately thought back to the steampunk rovers article posted on HN not too long ago. Using mechanical or fluidics technology could allow us explore places we haven't had access to before. My next thought was, what about random mechanical malfunctions? We face this with electronic devices too: electromagnetic interference, cosmic rays, etc. It's all about understanding the operating conditions where the device will be used and designing accordingly. It seems like most of the techniques we have learned in the electronics world have an analogous approach in mechanical computing. It's fun to think about the possibilities, and will be interesting to watch how old tech like this could be used in the future.
- ginko 6y agoMicroprocessor implies micrometer scale. I highly doubt that valves like that would work if scaled down to that size.
- andre_ramos 6y agoThey would and they do https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfluidics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfluidics
- agumonkey 6y agowow the first picture makes me wonder how much of that was in the mind of EE at the time triodes, tubes and transistors were invented.
- temporallobe 6y agoGreat article, but poorly written with quite a few grammatical, punctuation, and phrasing issues. Anyway the notion of using compressed air reminds me of an innovative pneumatic engine system that could be used to power all kinds of automobiles - but you can imagine the one huge drawback of exploding air tanks, which is probably why it went nowhere. Still, pneumatic tools are often preferred method for many construction professionals.
- formerly_proven 6y agoCompressed air is by far the most expensive form of power. Compressed air tools are used because they are fairly cheap and small yet high performance. (And in mining because they’re inherently Ex safe)
- MikeCapone 6y agoThe author isn't a native english speaker.
- rytik1234 6y agoNot this guy again......
- carapace 6y agoHow to make simple micro-fluidics using shrinky-dinks. They work pretty well for a simple DIY method. https://hackaday.com/2019/04/23/making-microfluidics-simpler-with-shrinky-dinks/ https://hackaday.com/2019/04/23/making-microfluidics-simpler...
- ineedasername 6y agoI suppose efficiency could then be measured in CFM instead of TDP, with a fan rated to deliver a certain amount of CFM to power things. Then in large server farms you'd basically need specialized HVAC engineers to design them, and admins with earplugs and goggles trained on the safety protocols of walking through 40mph wind tunnels through rows of server racks. "Server crash" could refer to an accident navigating the wind currents.
- nobodyandproud 6y agoIn one of my comp sci classes decades ago, I remember the discussion steering towards logic gates not having to be electronics, but with water pipes (as an example). Edit: I wish I could edit the grammar and syntax mistakes.
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- cambalache 6y agoMedium should be banned here. One of the biggest ironies in recent times is to see many self-appointed tech leaders posting their thoughts on a platform which offers nothing except nuisances. You would expect a technological-minded person to at least have a basic WordPress site or a simple html site.
- socialdemocrat 6y agoIf you don’t want to give away all your writing then that is not a good choice. It is not unreasonable for people spending time researching and writing an article to get compensated for that effort. Ads is one way of getting compensation. Another is to use something like medium. Medium also gives much better exposure than something like a personal blog. As someone who has written personal blog for 20 years I can tell you medium has made a huge difference. I have switched to doing the bulk of my writing there. It gives better reach and allows you to get compensated for the effort.
- exebook 6y agoI've read somewhere in Russian internet from the guy who operated microfluidic devices for a long time, the main problem with them is that regardles how good are the air filters the logic bits get dirty all the time and cleaning them is hard. He also mentioned intense noise in the operating room.