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."
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.
No, it does. We aren't trying to reduce error in logic operations. We're passing analog values between one and zero into logic circuits. Literally, at the lowest level, the "bits" pumping through the chip are probabilities. It's not analog in the sense that we use op amps, we still use gates, but the inputs and ouptuts of the gates are probabilities, not hard bits.