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Chaotic Computing In Practice
codyhess writes "The Economist published a great article detailing efforts to use Chaos in computing - "Speaking at the American Physical Society's annual March conference, William Ditto of the University of Florida told of his efforts to create a 'chaotic computer'."
Dr. Ditto can create standard logic gates (AND, OR, etc) that output a value according the their chaotic threshhold. Different logic operations can be performed by simply changing the threshhold, making an incredibly flexible computer that can perfom different functions instantaneously."
Nothing new, I've been doing that since Windows 3.11! :)
...is already well versed in chaotic computing.
I was just going to hire really crazy programmers, and change their meds based on what I needed.
... I type in random characters in Google and hit "I feel Lucky".
Skynet is being born!! .. or not!!
But I like the idea of logically flexible computers, and fear it at the same time. Sometimes, especially after work, it's nice to come home to something that can think in a straight line.
Big deal! The OSDN coffeemakers crunch both numbers and dry-roasted beans. Chaos is for people who don't are afraid to use caffeine!
Keep the faith, share the code
Google was no help...in translating this article into English.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
I first read that as Catholic Computing.
Pearly Gate logic will have to wait a few years yet, I guess.
Check out the date of the article - April 1st...
I am not a physicist, engineer, or scientist (or anything else qualified to answer this) but it seems to me, the simple minded one, that once you start controlling something, it isn't chaotic. I mean- if they are basing decisions on this, then it can't be completely chaotic, can it? How can you derive an AND, OR, etc, from chaos without controlling it (thus negating the chaos). Can someone dumb this down a little for those of us who aren't in the know?
Celebrate Steak and a Blowjob Day!
Shut up pudge, :-) hehehehehehe.
Anybody want to form a company with this technology and start manufacturing Discordian computers? "Holy Chao Computers" has a nice ring to it.
- fader
analog computers of old. IIRC they were used for ballistics calculations and similar by the military.
Here is an example.
Look into what kind of mathematical operations can be realized with multiplying DACs.
After the Yes or No to be the only answer for a computer, The bit have another one :-)
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
".. but will it run Linux?"
I think Gentoo's there already...
if( $a < sqrt( 0 / i ) ){randomly_reboot;} oh wait....windows already does this.
Dr. Ditto
Wait...Rush Limbaugh has a Ph.D?
I have discovered a truly marvelous
That's not flamebait or troll. The author is commenting on the AC who said his code was spaghetti code, and the author above is joking, saying that the AC must be pudge because of slashcode...
It's funny, laugh.
Leech neurons? Are you sure this wasn't an April Fools joke? (I was tempted to say, "Mmmmmmmm . . . leech neurons," but that's too obvious a joke.)
" It was clear to many physicists that using "qubits"--which, unlike ordinary bits, can exist in a "superposition" of the values 0 and 1 simultaneously--might yield an exponential improvement in computing power. This is because a pair of qubits could be in four different states at once, three qubits in eight, and so forth."
How does not answering the equation make this related to chaos theory? It's more like a hesitation in providing the correct answer if I read the article correctly.
hi
i think this paragraph really sums things up. the editor is such a moron as to explicitly state the obvious grammatical correlation between mathematically chaotic logic circuits and the general "chaos" users experience with their computers. and that preceded by a description that sounds like some kind of vampirian (or is it vampirical?), frankensteinian, technological monster. (rob zombie brings you "attack of the chaotic leech borgs"!).
p.s. the chaotic leech borgs would be a good name for a band
The way I see it (although I am not a mathematician), the major hurdle to realizing this is the fact that generating random numbers usually results in patterns.
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
'Spectral Rigidity in Atomic Uranium'
The poor guy must've heard comments on that for years: "Hey Sud, how about the rigidity of Uranium".
I had a life before I got karma
Evil Scientist: My clone army will soon be complete!
Secret Agent: Not so fast, Doctor Ditto!
Reading this article reminds me of the Improbability Drive in the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.
The last problem to be solved was to find a perfect source of randomness, which the galaxies best professors had been trying to solve for decades as whole departments had been built up on trying to solve this problem. Then one day, a brilliant student solves the problem by realizing a a cup of hot coffee provides this data. He is immediately awarded the highest Physics prize in the universe, and immediately lynched by his peers for being a smart-ass.
Couple of thoughts:
This isn't quite the same thing as having randomly perturbed input thresholds, which is how neurons work. And, as anyone who's tried it knows, neurons are only about 95% efficient in determining the correct result. It takes a lot of logical processing on top of the neural bitwise decisionmaking to distill the 95% to the 99% or so correct answer rate that constitutes "intelligent thought".
And, they'd better look into real-world noise margin requirements for thresholding electrical switching decisions, or "chaotic" is all their output will ever be.
Basically, I invented a simple but mind-blowingly fast algorithm for solving complex equations:
#include <stdlib.h>
double solve(void) {
return rand()
}
Sometimes, it will give you a root of x^2 - 7; other times, value of pi or phi. Once it even gave me the answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything!
Chaotic systems are actually quite controlloable in a very interesting way. The key property that makes a chaotic system so unpredictable is divergence -- if two copies of the system differ by delta, that delta will grow exponentially in time (doubling according to a coefficient call the Lyapunov coefficient). Yet, the divergence is never arbitrary. Instead, the divergence in chaotic systems happen within a space called the strange attractor - the diverging trajectories stay within in the attractor zone even as the split from each other.
If you map the strange attractor and nudge the system are the right point of the cycle, you can push the system into what ever mode of behaviro you want. Although you cannot predict the longterm behavior of the chaotic system, you can perturb it periodicaly to stabiize it or rapidlly shift its behavior. Scientists are looking at how to use this chaotic control theory to control unstable systems such as ultrahigh power lasers, manuerable jet aircraft, and heart tissue.
The key controlling a chaotic system is to understand how the chaotic system diverges (the shape of the strange attractor) and use that knowledge to deftly inject perturbations at just the right moment.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
You and I have issues ...
I can see how this would be useful in economics.
or is he just the 'friend' of this guy?
the freakin' junkie...
The only thing I want to know is; are these computers Chaotic Lawful, Chaotic Neutral, or Chaotic Evil?
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
this is "self modifying hardware", similar to "self modifying code". but is it fair to call it chaotic? In a chaotic system, the process remains the same but the output varies. In this situation, both the process and the data change over time. Or can a chaotic system also be one where the rules change as well?? Experts??
personally, SMC is a bitch to debug, I can't imaging how one would begin to debug THIS beast...
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
it's a shame that folks who are not scientists, engineers, or some other natural science specialists are treated like morons here on Slashdot.
isn't that already implemented through Perl?
wow, after reading your post, your sig takes on a strange new meaning...
But this would still be limited to the confines of the Church-Turing hypothesis. Fundamentally, it doesn't seem to be a stronger model of computation. Even quantum computing is a different model than the Turing machine, however it is not yet known if it is strictly stronger. At a first glance, this just seems to be a novel way of making reconfigurable circuits. But can it beat the Turing machine? I doubt it...
...Well I've been doing it since windows 3.1!
Hmm, this makes me wonder why 3.11 wouldn't have been 3.1.1. Seems much more accurate that way.
This reminds me of the problem with two vendors who were working on the Minuteman I Missle System back in the 60's. One company used positive logic (0 = 0V, 1 = 5V) and the other company used negative logic (0 = 0V, 1 = -5V)
So when it came time to connect the logic together the problem was discovered so a 6 foot cabinet called the "Coupler Rack" was built and installed to interface these two dissimilar logic/voltages.
This rack was a good place to monitor the signals though since it interfaced the onboard cpu & guidance system with the supporting equipment.
Shame on you Boeing and Autonetics.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
That's what fuzzy logic is for.
This is a stolen sig.
You wish.
To protect the perpetrator I won't mention his name, but here's a warning about people developing off in a corner, by themseleves rather than collaborating with their peers.
I worked for two years at one job before learning there was another programmer (besides the other two I worked with.) The group I worked with remained within the same office or no more than a room away and we frequently bounced ideas off each other, creating some damn fine products (if I do say so myself.) The other guy, actually a personal friend of the director, always worked on his own. When he retired and I inherited his work I was truly pissed off. The code was horrible and reflected the skills of a novice (a poor one at that) and was littered with GOTO statements and demonstrated a severly retarded understanding of documentation, coding style (i.e. 3000 line for-next loop with GOTOs out and back in again) and zero knowledge of library functions, which would have cut hundreds of lines from the code. (Since the code would be replaced by a full system a year later, all I had to do was just keep it running and fix corrupt data, which was frequent.)
You might get the impression that the lone coder was chaotic, but you would have it backward. His procedure was orderly, straight forward, rarely diverging from his approach or skill set. The three (of which I was part) was Chaos -- we thought outside the box, tried things, introduced new approaches to old problems. Where we once would say, "no, that can't be done", we went to, "Yes, that can be done, and has, furhter, it's more useful and versitile than you ever imagined."
Seize chaos, it's your real friend.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
P=?NP will soon become irrelevant! I won't have to take theory of computation!
If you're a fan of women, add me to your friends list.
...adding a good/evil axis to computer alignment. Because otherwise, if you get a chaotic computer, how do you know whether it's chaotic good, chaotic neutral, or chaotic evil?
Better to have a computer with a good heart and a general distrust of authority than one which wants to enslave everyone and reduce the world to a desolate wasteland.
It is the hardware side that uses chaos, not the software. Details are sketchy in the article, but I believe they are looking at chaotic systems and tweaking the hardware to use different regions of behavior depending on the desired use.
And, yes, there are reasons we're not all programming in LISP.
Things to do today: See list of things to do yesterday
At least 0 was still 0 so a rogue launch was impossible thanks to Boeing and Autonetics! Amusingly (and not surprisingly), Autonetics went on to be part of Rockwell, now part of Boeing.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
A computer that won't exactly say "1" and won't exactly say "0" either...EXACTLY like one of my past bosses when I needed a vacation day!
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
If a butterfly flaps its wings in Hollywood, will pr0n show up on that guy's screen?
I think I was using the Windows version of that last week... all my AND gates turned into Bill gates! HA HA HA!
http://www.fulcrumgallery.com
stuff |
We're already seeing quantum computing, as this story is in two places simulataneously. Remember, you saw it here first, and second, on Slashdot.
Dude
Did you check the date on that Economist article.
I couldn't figure out if this article is genuine or not. But there is a Dr William Ditto at Georgia Tech who works on non-linear dynamical systems, see http://www.physics.gatech.edu/people/faculty/wditt o.html
The idea sounds very similar to neurons to me. The input thresholds are not randomly determined, they follow an equation of motion that is chaotic. This can be completely deterministic but is unpredictable after a sufficiently long time.
Why is 99% intelligent and 95% not?
If you Google "Ditto Chaos Computer", you find (among others) this link.
Apparently, Dr. Ditto is something of an expert in chaos theory, and has/is applying it to more that the field of computing.
BTW, how come no knee-jerk commentary from the peanut gallery on how Dr Ditto is "outsourcing" to India? Or did the reference to his collaborator from Chennai, Sudeshna Sinha, completely escape everyone.
---anactofgod---
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
Perhaps, but what relevance does that have to the parent or to the article? If you're suggesting that Lisp is an example of self-modifying code, you are mistaken.
As I recall, it was a very, very hot cup of tea, not coffee.
Instantaneously? Now that's a trick I'd like to see.
The issue was that nobody had figured out a way to make infinite improbability. Finite improbability generators were readily available, but finding a way to create infinite improbability was considered impossible. A lab assistant that had been left behind to cleanup while everyone else went to a party realized that it was not improssible, simply highly improbable. He then calculated the improbability, fed that figure into a finite improbability generator and submersed the whole thing in a strong brownian motion generator ( such a strong cup of tea ).
if you think this is bad, you should have seen my last sig
What happen to reality if chaos magic sorcerer casts chaobolt on chaos computer calculating a chaotic attractor? Several practical test showed that results are algorithmically unpredictable, which I already predicted, but I am unable to prove it theoretically, because of proven impossibility to construct a theory in which it could be proved.
There you are, staring at me again.
Has anyone else noticed that whenever someone posts a story like this, with actual scientific theory behind it rather than computer gossip, suddenly the amount of sarcastic replies increases dramatically?
It's also interesting that a lot of repetitive and abnoxious posts that normally would've been modded down as trolling are suddenly considered funny under a real science article.
With all 7 chaos emeralds in the Chaos Computer, Dr. Eggman can finally solve the ultimate equation necessary to CONQUER THE WORLD!!!!
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
From the Lockheed Martin Analog computing link "A picture of a GEDA center showing (from the left) an R-2 unit, two L-2 units, (maybe) an N-2 unit behind the woman, (maybe) two L-1 units and another recording unit between the women."
I bet this is just another "me too!" project.
-- All views expressed in this post are mine and do not
-- reflect those of my employer or their clients
Logic gates that can be "programmed" to do any operation are pretty easy to implement in terms of regular transistors and binary logic.
If, on the other hand, we start using multiple voltage levels as part of digital circuits, it is still more efficient to use them as part of elements with dedicated functions.
Altogether, this doesn't seem like something that lets us do anything that we couldn't do before. The reason it isn't being done is probably that it's not useful (even FPGAs generally choose to fix the functions of individual gates but allow you to interconnect them in new ways).
Physical source of true randomness:
1) For N seconds, observe a radioactive isotope with a half-life of N seconds.
3) Write 1 if it decays, otherwise, write 0.
4) Repeat steps 1 and 2 M times, for a M-bit random value.
Maybe now we can model the female mind with new Boolean (sic) operators like MAYBE, MAYBE-NOT, and WHATEVER.
Table-ized A.I.
Darwin's Radio was okay
DR annoyed me. A key point in the first part (cave days) was that
SPOILER
WARNING
non-monogamy prevents SHEVA. The modern-day folks know this but promptly ignore it. In Bear's world, people gladly pop RU-Pentium if they think they're infected, rather than the obvious alternative. It felt like he was unwilling or unable to explore the social consequences of his own storyline.
"Seize chaos, it's your real friend."
Come to embrace the dark side, have we?
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Yes, digital computers may use analog signals, but the basic operations of a digital computer (AND, OR, XOR, etc.) are fundamentally digital operations. They quantize the analog signals into 1s and 0s, and output quantized signals based on those digital values (of course, with some amount of analog error).
An analog computer does no such thing. If it wants to add two signals, it adds them. In analog. You can do integrals and derivations in analog as well, amongst other things.
A digital computer may have to use analog signals to operate on some level, but that does not make it an analog computer.
manuerable jet aircraft
Eww, why would someone want to fly in that?
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Yep, but the date wasn't mentioned in the print edition and a Google search revealed this article on chaotic systems listing William Ditto as a co-author. I would guess it is genuine.
Forty-two!
They have also made a logic element out of a pair of leech neurons (nerve cells from blood-sucking worms) placed on a microchip.
I remember for my System's Analyst and Design class my teacher mentioning how they were already wiring organic matter to computer chips. One unfortunate student who made the great mistake to vocalized his complete shock over this, from which this cynical and suggestive instructor bluntly responded to him, "Read a book!" Mind you this particular student had the appearance of a squeegee-kid roadie.
Although I was not the one told off by the teacher that I should enlighten myself,I am very amazed over the use of organic matter is even possible. Are they running some sort of voltage through these fibers? Do they obviously react differently than say a copper wire, and why? Will it be just a matter of time before some medical students at a frat party get bored and hook up a cadaver's brain up to laptop to string search and download what the deceased use to listen to?
Some aim to please, I aim to tease.
While LISP is not necessarily self-modifying, it is capable of doing it. This works out as a nasty bug or really nifty feature depending on whether you do it on purpose or accidentally.
Things to do today: See list of things to do yesterday
That's too narrow definition of chaotic system, because Lyaponov coeefficients and strange attractors realted only to dynamical systems wich have a toplogy - that is some underlying continuity. However there is another type of object which exhibit chaotic behavior, though only in infinite areas - discrete objects like cellular automata, which have no notion of divergence, and discussed more in term of complexity This chatic computing idea is in fact related to cellular automata. Cellular automata is a perfect example simple, completly deterministic discrete system, which behavior very difficalt and sometimes impossible to predict
using randomized algorithms to perform the same tasks, exactly, other than being performed at the hardware level?
Uh, that's not true at all.
blockquoth the article:
Did you even read it?
State of the system is essentially kept by the chaotic strange attractors, and state change is accomplish through a conrolled divergence. Check out some books on chaos theory, or some tutorials on sites like this.
Cheers,
Justin
That's too narrow definition of chaotic system, because Lyaponov coeefficients and strange attractors realted only to dynamical systems which have a topology - that is some underlying continuity.
Good point. Most of the chaos-control research that I have seen focuses on physical/dynamic systems.
discrete objects like cellular automata, which have no notion of divergence
Yes and no. With CA's the divergence can be expressed in terms of the state difference between initially similar configurations. (XOR and count if the CA is binary). Also, CAs are actually broader than chaotic systems considering that only 1 of the 4 Wolfram classes of CA is characterized by chaotic behavior.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Here is a paper that describes using chaotic gates as "universal gates".
You must not be married...
Hey dude, you may remember me, we had the discussion about US Intelligence services monitoring communications are you were under the belief they could not monitor all communications. I finally have some proof that at least "millions" of phone calls and emails in North America are monitored every day. This is taken from the CBC, please note the third paragraph.. (I know this is off-topic and all, but I found our conversation really interesting, so I'll risk a few mod points for it..)
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/040404/w040428.html
Mod +5 Drunk
Wow - so he proposes an analog computer. They were common in the 50s and 60s.
http://dcoward.best.vwh.net/analog/
I therefore propose that this chaos computer be built by mathematical principles, and be powered by electricity. Two things of which I have personally invented this week.
BUMP PARENT UP
If I wasn't so scared of having my points taken away, I'd mod you up just for the engrish.
-from the my-bad-slashdot-karma-ran-over-your-dogma-dept-
All is needed is a *modular* quasi-assembler: Enter Parrot (www.parrotcode.org)
Modular chaos register tuning allows for compatibility for new hardware types (optical, quantum chaos) and systems (plexing).
This would also form the basis for GA (Genetic Algorithm) based OS ---> http://sthigpen.freeshell.org/magicgarden
SA Thigpen * KL1FE * http://sthigpen.freeshell.org
Bill gates?!
with multiple images. Years ago a company I was working at had an FPGA that could store 4 images and switch between them every clock cycle, no chaos required.
For those who don't know, an FPGA is a flexible computer chip. Imagine a motherboard full 100,000s or millions of solid state "glue logic" gates that could be re-aranged by little elves repeatedly, and that's an FGPA, but larger, and less expensive. You could build an 8088, then a DSP, then a fast FFT, a converter, then a crypto processor, whatever. Creative uses them on some soundblasters so the hardware (yes, the hardware) can be upgraded ith more features in the future. On mine they added a few digital effects and the ability to handle another few hundred MIDI voices.
Except, of course, that your programming paradigm isn't chaotic either.
Not by the mathematical definition, or any less rigorous one.
What you're describiing is simply an organized approach which ranges more widely in the solution space. You choose to attack problems "from outside the box", yet you are just operating in a bigger box.
Calling this "chaos" is as wrong as calling that long coders approach "chaotic".
The most interesting part of this story was that changing the threshold level. This reminds me of the thresholds that must be surmounted to bridge synapses in the nervous system. Perhaps chaotic computing is involved in neuronal functioning. Just my $.02.
I'm fairly sure it's genuine, the paper it's based on was published in '96, and is sitting next to me right now.
At least I think that's real paper.
If you're referring to macros, they are not an example of self-modifying code. They just allow the definition of new syntactic structures; they can essentially be expanded at compile-time.
In contrast, self-modifying code was an idea that I believe was originally proposed by van Neumann back in the 40s and 50s. The idea is that a computer consists of a processor that as input a stream of data and instructions (both stored in memory and loaded into the processor). All computers are also capable of modifying data (i.e. writing to memory); van Neumman suggested that programs should also be written by modifying their instructions -- i.e. by rewriting parts of their executable code at runtime. That naturally makes a program difficult to debug, since the code it is executing might change from instruction to instruction.
A quantum computer is simply an implementation of a nondeterministic Turing Machine. It's not a different model in any way at all.
Most people, when they say "Turing Machines", implicitly assume "deterministic Turing Machines". This is unfortunate, because Turing's Computational Theory is rich enough to describe many things beyond simple deterministic TMs.
Well, since I can't seem to find my AI text or LISP book in al my boxes of books, a quick google search turned up this from wikipedia: "self-modifying code is code that modifies itself. This is straightforward to write when using assembly language and is also supported by some high level language interpreters such as SNOBOL4 or the Lisp programming language." (The emphasis is mine.)
Things to do today: See list of things to do yesterday
Uh, nothing you said in your post makes any sense. I wonder about a moderation system that gives you a +5 score.
Neurons do not "work" by having randomly perturbed input thresholds. Are you talking about some weird computational architecture of your own design, perhaps? Then you should cite it. If it involves "bitwise decisionmaking", then it's a very special architecture indeed.
Tell us more about this "intelligent thought" and how it corresponds to "correct answer rates". Those of us who have studied neural computation for the past 15 years are just dying to know!
>Obviously, they used parts of blood sucking worms to build an early version.
There are some problems with the article: it makes claims that aren't backed up. So what's new on slashdot? Anyway, here are the gory details from my point of view. The original source reference appears to suffer from the same problem.
The gist of the new idea is a clever way to create a special type of gate whose dynamical threshold value can be modified to implement one of several possible logic gates. An interesting idea, but not computationally revolutionary. These gates would still implement the same chips we use today.
Now, the article goes on to claim that there is a wonderful new horizon of modifiable computation. I see a lot of words and no details. How are those modifiable threshold levels in these gates stored, anyway? Don't tell me it's with something like a flip-flop. It would be asinine to need 6-8 gates to store each bit of the modifiable threshold value for one "chaotic" gate.
Also, there's the small problem that we can MODEL any type of strange new computational paradigm and have been able to for years. We're no closer to a replacement for Turing-style computation than we were decades ago. I've seen one paper about Analog computers being able to compute some esoteric set of functions that discrete computers can't touch, but I haven't seen anyone explain how this helps in any useful way.
My keyboads not woking popely.