Analog Computing is GENIUS - Here's Why!

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My first experience of digital computing was in 1962 when the U.S. Navy trained me for their first three ships at sea to be equipped with them. While those early computers were much smaller than an IBM mainframe of the time, they were the size of large double door refrigerators, and needed chilled water to cool the processors. Energy costs were high despite the transistors they used, and processing times were much slower than the simple digital devices we use today. The digital computers were used as an air traffic control system, for combat and it fed some of the information about potential targets for our missiles to the fire control technicians on a different set of display consoles. Their computers and consoles were analog. At that time the speed of their analog resolvers and differentiators was superior to any digital simulation our computers could produce. But they were constantly having to fine tune the analog elements to their system to maintain accuracy. As you note, digital can be very precise and repeatable.

I started my career working on analogue computers used in industrial and manufacturing environments. They were mostly used for controlling motors and used proportional, integration and differential calculations at very high speed. They worked well in environments that were not computer friendly and were very robust and reliable. That was 40 years ago and they lasted for years because they just worked. I think the challenge was that to program them you needed to understand electronics and mathematics and that isn’t so necessary with modern digital computers.

Having grown up in the golden age of record players I fall on the side of digital. After a single play on a turntable a record will lose that frequency response curve. It really doesn't matter how expensive the turntable the wear and tear on the record is a function of the design. A physical needle riding grooves wears a bit of those grooves away with each play of the record. The quality of the digital recording is there forever.

you know, in 1974, researchers had developed an analog matrix method that could recognise the alphabetic and numeric characters, individually, with a very high success rate, and i remember being surprised at thesmall amount of analog hardware to perform the job, once learned/programmed...and, even then, the analog methods were very fast and very low power, per "recognition"

Love learning about diverse computing methods. Between analog, digital, and quantum computers, we'll be able to solve problems so much better than ever before!

I had a little trade school on automatic transmissions of the 1980s and before. I always asserted that the valve body in one of those transmissions was essentially an analog computer that operated hydraulically instead of electronically. I still assert that.

I'm a trained singer. The must authentic and believable representation of a human voice I have ever heard was a recording of Gigli played on an old 78 record played on a wind up gramophone with a horn. You could actually feel the voice like you can at a live performance.

Yeah, Digital was never truly Digital you know, it was always just some conventions about analogue voltage levels(TTL/CMOS), and in a usecase like this, storing neuron BIAS values "vertically", we're basically removing those conventions and unleashing the full potential that every "digital Bit" had in the 1st place. LOVED this video... it suited my old school analogue brain really well 🙂

I remember using mechanical computers in the Navy that measured speed of targets for our Fire Control systems. Those computers wear far faster than anything around at the time.

I just realized that analog computers with a digital nanny to adjust for drift or runaway errors is how the fuel control unit in many modern jet engines operates. They use an analog hydromechanical computers to calculate and dispense the fuel as required, and a digital computer to adjust things on the fly to keep everything optimized for the best balance of fuel economy, longevity, power, and emissions. Many small aircraft still use what is essentially a purely analog hydromechanical computer to control the fuel flow to the engine. The fuel injection on these piston engines uses inputs such as throttle position, fuel lever position, airflow, RPM, and air pressure to compute and meter out the fuel necessary for those parameters. Every annual or 100 hour inspection includes checking the fuel mixture at high and low power settings and adjusting as needed to keep the fuel system output correct.

There's nothing like the clicks, crackles and pops on your favourite track on vinyl.

Great content today and always. I am somewhat of a music snob and grew up in the analogue era. I embraced the digital movement in music as it was introduced and find digital very satisfying. My ears can only hear so much frequencies as many of us baby boomers grew up in the rock n roll era . Therefore as close as digital simulation is getting to analogue it is good enough for a large percentage of the population's ears. Thanks again and keep the great content coming

This explanation is exactly how electronic devices have worked for decades, the analogue circuits manage the interface to the real world, and the digital circuits do the actual repeatable, reliable work

So what you're saying is that the Orwellian, dystopic surveillance society is going to be cheaper than ever for massive corporations to deploy.

From what I've read, Mythic's tech isn't really quite analog. One source reported 256 descript gate voltages for each transistor storing a value. This is no doubt closer to analog than digital binary states are, but the values are still quantized. Still, it's an interesting use of flash technology. I guess it also means the data can still be backed up and transmitted digitally.

When I was in the Navy, the fire control systems where analog; they used syncros and servos to compute in real-time the solution to fire projectiles onto targets.

In WW2, the navy had analog computers that used gears to set range and speed of targets and how to aim the guns. They were quite accurate when used right.

When I was in college low these many decades ago, we used individually interconnected analog boxes to solve differential equations…

A lot of the misconceptions about digital vs analog where vinyl is concerned, have largely been debunked by numerous audio experts. Also worth considering with the resurgence of Vinyl as "fashionable", that you are actually buying a digitally produced and mastered product with no analog in the chain at all.