Re: Well DUH ! AI People Finally Realize They Can Ditch Most Floating-Point for Big Ints

On 10/15/24 7:03 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 15/10/2024 07:31, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

On 10/14/24 6:16 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

 

I think that even if it does not work successfully it is great that people are thinking outside the box.
Analogue computers could offer massive parallelism for simulating complex dynamic systems.

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   Yea, but not much PRECISION beyond a stage or two
   of calx  :-)
>
   No "perfect" fixes.

 As I said, let's say we are simulating airflow over  a fast moving object - now normally the fluid dynamics CFM is crap and it is cheaper and more accurate to throw it in a wind tunnel.

   Very likely ... though I've never thrown anything into
   a wind tunnel.
   Analog still has a place. Until you go atomic it really
   is a very analog universe.
   In theory you can do "digitized analog" ... signal
   levels that seem/act analog but are really finely
   discrete digital values. This CAN minimize the
   chain-calc accuracy problem.

The wind tunnel is not measuiring data to any high accuracy but its using atomic level measurement cells in enormous quantities in parallel.
 The problem with CFM is you cant have too may 'cells' or you run out of computer power. Its a step beyond 3D modelling where the more triangles you have the closer to real everything looks, but its a similar problem .
 But a wind tunnel built out of analogue 'cells' might be quite simple in concept. Just large in silicon scale.
 And it wouldn't need to be 'programmed' as its internal logic would be constructed to be the equations that govern fluid dynamics. All you would then do is take a 3D surface and constrain every cell in that computer on that surface to have zero output.
 If I were a graduate again that's a PhD project that would appeal...

   I've seen old analog computers - mostly aimed at finding
   spring rates and such. Rs, caps, inductors ... you can
   sim a somewhat complex mechanical system just by plugging
   in modules. Real-time and adequately accurate. You can
   fake it in digital now however ... but it's not as
   beautiful/natural.