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> In 1954, Eiichi Goto invented the parametron, a logic device leveraging nonlinear parametric oscillation with two ferrite cores. Unlike the vacuum tube and ea
by sixtyj 2mo ago
> In 1954, Eiichi Goto invented the parametron, a logic device leveraging nonlinear parametric oscillation with two ferrite cores. Unlike the vacuum tube and early transistor circuits prevalent at the time, the parametron offered remarkable stability, requiring minimal maintenance compared to vacuum tubes with short lifetime and costing significantly less than both vacuum tubes and nascent transistors. Its simplicity and reliability made it an ideal foundation for computer design. Early applications showcased its superior fault tolerance over competing technologies, such as vacuum tubes with relatively short-lifetime, slow electromechanical relays, and unstable point-contact transistors.
- Forgeties79 2mo ago[flagged]
- taneq 2mo agoNo, it’s literally a paragraph from TFA. https://ethw.org/Milestones:Parametron,_1954#Invention_of_the_Parametron https://ethw.org/Milestones:Parametron,_1954#Invention_of_th...
- Forgeties79 2mo ago[flagged]
- NDlurker 2mo agoWhy?
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- bheadmaster 2mo agoYour comment is AI. My tarot reader gypsy woman flagged it with 95% confidence
- graceful6800 2mo agoAI text detector is powered by AI. QED your comment is AI summary.
- bryanlarsen 2mo agoAI detectors have very poor accuracy on short articles.
- eitland 2mo agoIt is fine to call out AI if it is annoying. Someone hunting for things that might be AI and polluting discussions with it is a service I did not sign up for. Besides it is my opinion that not all AI detectors are reliable and this might currently be a big problem in some cases, especially in education.
- Forgeties79 2mo agoI’ll actually respond to you because everyone else has that dog piling tone as if they haven’t seen any of the other comments. That’s a fair point. I was probably being too bullish on this and shouldn’t have said anything.
- jbm 2mo agoMaybe the text should include some extraneous war crime solicitation to ensure a human wrote it. Maybe we should all do so. Death to (insert random enemy here)
- clint 2mo agoAI reply
- xenadu02 2mo agoI think that overstates the case for the parametron though. Even compared to contemporary vacuum tubes they were slower. Contemporary bleeding edge vacuum tube computers could reach Mhz frequencies. Parametrons were 10-15kHz. The supposed power benefits depended on state. At idle they were significantly more efficient but the more work they did and the faster you tried to run them the exponentially more electricity they required (and heat they generated). Lastly because the early ones were lower frequency they required physically larger inductors. Contemporary vacuum tube computers took up similar amounts of space due to cooling constraints but parametrons were bulky in ways you couldn't fix. Parametrons were a dead-end technology almost from the get-go due to physical scaling limits. Even the earliest use of discrete transistors blew them out of the water beyond any hope that some magical physical scaling would rescue them. Abandoned technologies are usually abandoned for very good reasons not just because they happened to lose the race or get backed by the wrong companies. No amount of investment was ever going to help parametrons catch up with transistors - just as no amount of investment was going to help vacuum tubes catch up either.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]