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Chips That Flow With Probabilities, Not Bits
holy_calamity writes "Boston company Lyric Semiconductor has taken the wraps off a microchip designed for statistical calculations that eschews digital logic. It's still made from silicon transistors. But they are arranged gates that compute with analogue signals representing probabilities, not binary bits. That makes it easier to implement calculations of probabilities, says the company, which has a chip for correcting errors in flash memory claimed to be 30 times smaller than a digital logic-based equivalent."
It would seem that they have reinvented the analog computer, but this time entirely on a chip. And probably (hopefully) with some logic that prevents errors due to natural processes like capacitive coupling.
12.5% that understands binary 87.5 that don't...
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
So basically its a computer that makes up statistical computations and corrects them to fit the models on the fly? Lazy scientists, rejoice!
Been there, done that. Analog computers existed 50 years ago because digital computers were too slow. Even then, they were a nice market. Calibration is a big issue, and even with a perfectly calibrated machine you don't have a lot of accuracy. With the speed of today's digital computers, this is a (poor) solution in search of a problem.
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The article mentions Bayesian calculations. Can these computers really speed up those calculations? Nowadays Bayesian calculations usually involve thousands of iterations of a technique called Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) unless the distributions in question are conjugate priors. The simulation then converges to the right answer.
The issue I see is that all these techniques are just math. They are either analytic (conjugate priors) or require strict error bounds in order get sensible answers (MCMC). There's no separate system of math that Bayesians use. Like many others, Bayesians just need quick reliable floating point mathematics. So anyway, I don't see how this can help Bayesian statisticians, unless it also revolutionizes engineering, physics, etc.
This is potentially a great advance. Everyone knows that analogue computing can greatly outperform digital computing (now each bit has a continuum of states so stores infinitely more data, each operation on 2 'bits'....you get the idea)....but there are many issues to resolve i.e.
1) Error correction - every 'bit' is in an erroneous state
2) Writing code for the thing - anyone got analogue algorithm design on their CVs?
can I get a simpler explanation of what this can do for you? I understand it says it will be used for probability, but what does that really let you *do*?
I can see how an AND gate would work.
Anyone want to guess how the others function?
Or am I on completely the wrong track here.
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well, to be honest, i have absolutely no idea - this is really new, and if it takes off, it'll be a while until it becomes clear what the possibilities and limitations of this technology are. many people have pointed out that it's just an analog computer, but it's not the same - first of all, it's on a microchip, hence much more power. that alone makes things different...
weinersmith
How much longer before we get the "infinite improbability machine"?
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." - Napoleon Bonaparte
One step closer to the Infinite Improbability Drive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_in_The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Infinite_Improbability_Drive)
as a machine learning person
This either means:
/.
You are a person who is learning from a machine or....
You are a learning machine who is now referring to itself as person! You also get excited about probabilities and you are posting on
A.I. has gone too far...
It's still just math. How will this be any different from digital calculations except for maybe the level of precision?
It's got absolutely nothing to do with analog computers. At all. The first application cited is even digital storage.
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It's vaguely familiar, but since no two circuits are *truly* identical at the analog layer, *and* change as the temperature changes, people used digital instead where 'mostly 0' is still '0' and 'mostly 1' is still '1' regardless. Otherwise you can't mass produce them.
Of more interest is people using analog-alike bitstreams, where the average number of 1's vs 0's in a random stream is the amplitude of the analog wave. They then blend the input streams together to produce the output stream. I've mostly seen this done by Royal Holloway University to produce neural chips that *don't* need squillions of interconnections - they just blend probability streams. Looks like people are playing with optical ones now too. Why not put a story up about that instead?
First probability on a chip, next an improbability drive!
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Am I really the only person left that hates this construction? I know that it has become (very) common usage, but we, as nerds, should understand that details matter.
If one says that something is 50% smaller, we understand that to mean half the size. And if one says that something is 3000% smaller, or 30 times smaller, should we not understand that as not only taking no space, but actually giving us 29 times the original space back?
Unless we are making a three part comparison, which has new perils. If B is half the size of A, and C is 30 times smaller than B than B is to A, then we may understand the size of C as 0.5^30 times the size of A. However, if B is 99% of the size of A, then having C be 30 times smaller than B can mean that C is 70% of the size of A, or maybe C is 0.99^30 times the size of A.
Perhaps we should stick to saying what we mean, with things like "a chip for correcting errors in flash memory claimed to be one thirtieth the size of a digital logic-based equivalent"
See that "Preview" button?
Wow - just expand this idea infinitely, and we could have an infinite improbability drive. Think of the possibilities!
If it uses analogue signals internally then its an analog computer whatever those signals may represent at a higher level in the same way that a DSP is just as digital as a crypto chip even though the binary data is used for different things.
Ergo its an analog system. What those signals represent is irrelevant.
You are a learning machine who is now referring to itself as person! You also get excited about probabilities and you are posting on /.
A.I. has gone too far...
On the plus side, it sounds like the robot revolution is going to be stymied for the same reason as my productivity. Destroy all humans! After I refresh /. one more time...
The enemies of Democracy are
Those BSOD jokes were old 10 years ago. Did your time machine take a wrong turn and you ended up in 2010 instead of 1995?
why? can you elaborate?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Sounds like this hardware would be useful for Fuzzy Logic based AI applications. Fuzzy logic is useful for decision making and automating processes where multiple variables affect a range of possible reactions. Like when the cup you grab with your hand turns out to be very light because your girlfriend drank all your juice. When you initially grab the cup you start off with too much muscle activation and then adjust quickly at first then more slowly based on new sensory data. From common experience we know our grip strength isn't a function of one or zero but a range of activation that changes based on the ranges of other inputs. This is something Fuzzy Logic is good at and possibly something this chip would be good for too.
and if I start. New sentence's. In completely inappropriate. Location's within my text. You can still understand. What I mean. Adding apostrophe's to my plural's also leaves my meaning clear. It's still not correct.
Just very definite ones, that is.
YOU BASTARD. i was going to say this :/
Ooops... make that Carver Mead, Addison Wesley 1989
Seastead this.
under my desk. After all, quantum mechanics is used inside it. So it's a quantum computer, right?
well, give a link to a book describing this concept and how it works in practice. Or some other publication with meaningful benchmarks for real-world examples.
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is that really a probability thing though?
okay, if it matches x number of filters, it's spam, right?
So how is that strictly probability though? That would seem quite absolute. Isn't that more "100% once it matches"? I'm trying to wrap my head around how this is different or how this is exclusively probability? Maybe the example is bad. I don't know, and I don't want to attack it. Sorry, ac's comment didn't help explain though :(
And an analog component within a digital computer does not an analog computer make -- they all have analog components anyway, for fuck's sake.
Analog computers were cost-effective when a "floating-point option" came in a 5' cabinet and cost more than a luxury home.
ICs and cheap memory fixed that problem and analog calculation went the way of the dodo.
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So what would it be if it were 1 time smaller?