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."

Comments

Sounds similar to...

[robslimo]

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.

IEEE Definition

[Bimo_Dude]

Apparently, this theory was first developed in 1996. Here is the IEEE Definition of chaotic computing.

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.

Re:IEEE Definition

[JGski]

Chaos != Random

Chaos is a middle-ground between purely ordered and purely random. There is structure in chaotic systems, it's only that on short orders of time it appears random to human neural signal processing - this is largely a limitation of the human capacity to perceive rather than a characteristic of the system observed.

Re:Not chaotic? (Yes, you can control chaos)

[G4from128k]

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.