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I'm a bit worried for that analog-matrix-multiplication-for-AI company. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that the past half century is littered with compani

I'm a bit worried for that analog-matrix-multiplication-for-AI company. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that the past half century is littered with companies whose value proposition was "our specialized thing does 10x better than digital transistors" and then they predictably just got steamrolled by Moore's law. And although Dennard scaling ended two decades ago, the flops-per-watt and flops-per-second of AI-specialized chips like TPUs has been improving substantially recently [1][2]. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensor_Processing_Unit#Third_generation_TPU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensor_Processing_Unit#Third_g... 2: https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.04305 https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.04305

uxp100 5y ago
Fuzzy logic was pretty closely tied to Neural Networks at one point (80s to early 90s?) in terms of which researchers talked about them and even just which books info about them was located in. I think dedicated analog fuzzy logic chips were, as you say, steamrolled by Moore's Law. (My zorojushi rice cooker still mentions fuzzy logic, but they must be just implementing the fuzzy "transfer function" with an mcu at this point, right?)
snakke 5y ago
You're correct that specialised analog companies have not done well historically. However, we don't find ourselves in exactly the same position in computer architecture/performance as we've been decades before. There's some (relatively) new ideas that now the performance of computers will be pushed more by dedicated silicon for a dedicated purpose, and tools. See for example there's plenty of room at the top [1], or Hennesy's talk at Google [2]. This of course does not mean that analog computers are suddenly viable, but it does mean that they could potentially fill a niche where they failed previously. Anecdotally, when looking at jobs for hardware design by the likes of Infineon, STM, Cyient etc. there seems to be a relatively high ask for (senior) analog designers, and a new focus on mixed-technology chips. It might turn out to be a dud still, but it isn't the same situation as decades before. 1: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aam9744 https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aam9744 , or the IEEE article https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7863324 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7863324 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Azt8Nc-mtKM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Azt8Nc-mtKM , around the 12:15 mark, but the entire video is relevant.

uxp100 5y ago

Fuzzy logic was pretty closely tied to Neural Networks at one point (80s to early 90s?) in terms of which researchers talked about them and even just which books info about them was located in. I think dedicated analog fuzzy logic chips were, as you say, steamrolled by Moore's Law. (My zorojushi rice cooker still mentions fuzzy logic, but they must be just implementing the fuzzy "transfer function" with an mcu at this point, right?)

snakke 5y ago

You're correct that specialised analog companies have not done well historically. However, we don't find ourselves in exactly the same position in computer architecture/performance as we've been decades before. There's some (relatively) new ideas that now the performance of computers will be pushed more by dedicated silicon for a dedicated purpose, and tools. See for example there's plenty of room at the top [1], or Hennesy's talk at Google [2]. This of course does not mean that analog computers are suddenly viable, but it does mean that they could potentially fill a niche where they failed previously. Anecdotally, when looking at jobs for hardware design by the likes of Infineon, STM, Cyient etc. there seems to be a relatively high ask for (senior) analog designers, and a new focus on mixed-technology chips. It might turn out to be a dud still, but it isn't the same situation as decades before. 1: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aam9744 https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aam9744 , or the IEEE article https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7863324 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7863324 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Azt8Nc-mtKM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Azt8Nc-mtKM , around the 12:15 mark, but the entire video is relevant.