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This comes up every few years. Please, guys, before you conclude that probabilistic computers are the future, think about what it would be like debugging a prog
by ajb 14y ago
This comes up every few years. Please, guys, before you conclude that probabilistic computers are the future, think about what it would be like debugging a program running on one. Speaking as someone who has implemented a probabilistic version of 'git bisect'[1], I think it would be hard.
That's not to say that the idea is completely dumb. A probabilistic GPU would be useful, although it would go against the trend of being able to use them for general computation.
[1] That is, one that looks for probabilistic bugs, not one that runs on a probabilistic CPU. See https://github.com/Ealdwulf/bbchop https://github.com/Ealdwulf/bbchop
- ThaddeusQuay2 14y ago"Please, guys, before you conclude that probabilistic computers are the future, think about what it would be like debugging a program running on one." Most of today's software is already probabilistic. Most bugs occur because the software is run on the wrong hardware. Therefore, once we have probabilistic hardware, most existing software can easily be ported, and most bugs will instantly disappear.
- bad_user 14y agoErr, what? Most bugs occur because the software has bugs, as in broken logic or edge-cases that aren't handled. To quote from "No Silver Bullet" [1] ... I believe the hard part of building software to be the specification, design, and testing of this conceptual construct, not the labor of representing it and testing the fidelity of the representation Hardware has nothing to do with it. [1] http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~cah/G51ISS/Documents/NoSilverBullet.html http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~cah/G51ISS/Documents/NoSilverBulle...