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(circa 1960) "It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years."" - John von Neumann

The biggest drawback of analogue circuits is that they are quite specific to a problem, so making something that will work for most/generic problems is difficult, where a digital computer is trivially easy in comparison. But, when you need something specific, the analogue computer can be significantly faster and more energy efficient. I look forward to the hybrid components that will be coming out in the future.

My analog computer has ten fingers and ten toes.

I studied analog computers/computing in the 1970s as part of my electrical engineering education. At one time (after that) I worked for a company in Ann Arbor, Michigan that made some of the most powerful analog computers in the world. (I was in marketing by then.) They were used, among other things, to model nuclear reactors and power plants. Incredibly powerful.

1:32 No, it may seem like a infinite set, but in practice it's limited by the signal-to-noise ratio, the SNR is efectively the number of "bits" of a analog computer, the rule of thumb is 6db ~ 1 bit, also each component adds its own noise on top of the signal, you lose "bits" as your computation becomes more complex, BTW that is also kinda true on digital computers, if you use floating point numbers you lose some precision with each rounding, however on digital its easier to just use more bits if you need them, on analog decreasing noise is not so trivial

I built and used analogue computers (although I didn't call them that) to control the temperatures in a multi-layered cryostat for my Ph.D work in the mid '70s. I did the number crunching on a digital computer that filled the basement of the maths dept building using punch card input. 😮. 20 odd years later I found myself working with an engine management computer for a helicopter that was pure analogue. When I approached the system engineer at a large well known aerospace company who had the design control authority for the system to ask some fundamental questions about it he didn't have a clue - he was purely digital. I'm retired now but if drag my knowledge out of the closet along with my flared jeans and tie-dyed T-shirts perhaps I'll come back into fashion. 😁

I think the best way to sum it up is: Analog is fast and efficient, but is hard to design (or at least formulate the problem). Once you build it, it is only good at solving that specific problem. Digital on the other hand is much more flexible. You have an instruction set and can solve any problem that you can write an algorithm for using those instructions, so you can solve multiple problems with that same machine. Tradeoff is the mentioned slower speed and efficency (compared to analog). My favourite story about digital vs. analog is the Iowa-class battleships: They were built in the 1940s and were reactivated in the 80s. The fire control computers (electromechanical analog computers using cams, differentials and whatnot) were state of the art back in the day, but given the invention of the transistor and all that since then, the navy did look at upgrading them to digital. What they found is that the digital system did not offer greater accuraccy over the analog. While over 40 years technology advanced quite a bit, the laws of physics remained the same so the old analog computers worked just as well.

Great video, thanks for sharing. The biggest problem with analog computers is there are so few people that know how to work on them. I’m reminded of a hydro electric plant I toured once that had an electro mechanical analog computer that controlled the units. At the time I visited it was already considered to be ancient and they were actively attempting to replace it simply because know body knew how it worked. They only knew how to turn it on, off, and wind the clock spring once a shift the exact number of spins that it needed to keep running. They had been trying to replace it with a new computer but none of the many attempts could match its precision in operating the plant and maintaining proper water flows. They were in constant fear that it might break. I checked back maybe 20 years later to ask how it was and know one working their knew what I was talking about. Sad that it was long forgotten by everyone at the plant. I thought it should have been retired to a museum, and still hope that possibly it was.

Analogue computing is analogous to the P vs NP problem in pure mathematics. It is fantastic at anything which is hard to calculate, but quick to check. I'm this case, anything hard to figure out how to express, but with solidly defined parameters. It works by shunting a good deal of the difficulty solving the problem up front to the designers of the machine. It can take years of incredibly hard work to figure out how to express a single problem in analogue form, but once you DO computing the answer for any combination or variant of the problem is virtually instantaneous.

I'm skeptical about the broad assertion - 'Why the Future of AI & Computers Will Be Analog' - that analog computing will dominate in the future. Analog computing clearly has its niche, particularly with tasks involving continuous, real-world signals-such as audio and visual processing, or interpreting sensor data-where this technology presents a clear advantage. However, framing this niche strength as 'the future' and implying a universal superiority over digital computing seems a bit overstated to me.

I started my career with analogue computers in the 1970s as they were still being used in industrial automation for motor control (PID: Proportional, Integral and Differential). I worked in a repair centre and built some test gear to allow me to calibrate them. It's no surprise to me that they have come back, within certain niche applications they are very powerful, although not particularly programmable, unless you count circuit design as programming :-)

Gave a talk at DataVersity on context. Explained in the 70's we could build a nuclear power plant instrument panel with gauges of different ranges - this allowed the techs to scan the whole wall and immediately see if anything looked out of normal range (usually straight vertical). However, everyone wanted digital, not realizing that with that change, each number had to be individually read, consciously scaled and then thought about (compare with 'normal'). With digital came the necessity for alarms because it took too much mental effort to scan the wall. Something few consider to this day...

An analog clock is not continuous, its movement is a function of the internal gear ratios and the arm moves in discrete, quantifiable steps

When I was in the Navy the ships I was stationed on had a single gun on the bow. This was a 5"/54 and was operated by an analog computer. If you watch the SyFy movie Battleship you can see this type of aiming a large gun round at a given target. One of the big advantages of analog computers is that they are not subject to EMP.

Whenever I design electronics, I often use analog preprocessing, since it takes much less energy to amplifie, integrate or filter signals with OP-amps using summing, PT1-, PT2-models, integrators and differentiators instead to using convolutions or FFT to construct FIR-, or IIR-filter, that needs a lot of processing power.

It's all gonna be weird af crystal megastructures powering supercomputers in the end

One of the biggest hurdles to analog ASICs has been the extreme difficulty of designing the IC circuitry. In fact, the most expensive and labor intensive part of a processor has always been the analog circuitry to regulate and supply power, among other things. With the help of AI we’re going to see a massive explosion in this field, since it can easily pull from natural laws, fab constraints and desired outcomes to take much of the guesswork and iteration out of analog ASIC engineering. Literally machines building the next generation of machines.

It's important to understand in the clock example - that even though the clock hand (second hand) was moving discretely (moving only every 1 second, and not continuously), it still is analog. Because it is not necessarily the continuous nature that makes something analog, it's if the physical process happening is _analogous_ to the real event. The twist of the second-hand is directly proportional to how much of a minute has passed. However, in a digital clock, the voltages in the bits (0-5V) are not analogous or directly proportional to the time that has passed.

The large hall-sized computers you show at the start of the video are actually digital computers. They just used vacuum tubes instead of transistors so took up a lot of space and used a lot of electricity.

Playgrounds in the 80s were amazing. My favorite was the spinning metal platform of death. That was still safer than sharing a seesaw with a betrayer, that thing was coming for your chin or they tried to smash your spine on the ground. Good way to learn which kids couldn't be trusted. Flying off the swings to land onto gravel and dirt and get cool scratches. I was always bleeding a little bit as a kid, a result of good times :)

As one who has programed and used analog computers in the past, I can only say is "I told you so." They are the most powerful computers in the world. It took a while, but I knew they would be back. Welcome back my old friends. Do great work.

Like, the first 75% of this video talk about what analog computers are not. Add some snappy comments and twist, and you still don't come close to what is mentioned in the video headline

While working for Texas Instruments, I spent six months learning about the SEL 32/55 hybrid (analog and digital) computer. Ultimately, I worked on the digital side as a systems programmer. I left TI when they planned on transferring me to work on the Ada compiler. I wanted to be a VM/370 (BSEPP, SEPP, SP, etc.) systems administrator/programmer. I took a job as the lead systems programmer at the Owens Corning Fiberglas Research Center in Newark, Ohio. I loved the job and working with the IBM user group SHARE.

Hi Matt. I asked myself the same Analog or Digital question when I met with the Boeing Engineers in 1967. I had been hired and to go to USA because they believed me to be the guy with answers. They showed me their best analogue computer and then the fastest scientific digital computer available at that time (It was an IBM 360/65). I wrote a few algebraic/calculus equations (using Fourier analysis) based on the physics of the natural world plus a few mathematical modelling scenarios. I tried to run them on the analogue system first because the natural world we live in is not black or white with on or off. Our world is naturally a continuous analogue with a morphing of possibilities like Transitions in a Graphic as you shade from one color to another. It turned out that one set of equations generated an even more complex set of equations that were beyond the understanding of even the best theoretical Mathematicians. When I used Fortran (and Matrix theory like Upper Heisenberg) on a Digital machine I could at least see a way forward to modelling the actual physical world even if it was an approximation. By using "Quad precision/4 Word" and 32 decimal point floating point variables I could get close enough for the Boeing aircraft designers and Space scientists to get the answers they needed. Digital Computing is an approximation and faster computing has meant we can get some kind of results faster. However they are not a true representation of physical reality and especially of how the neural networks within our Human minds work to solve physical problems. So to come back to the question Analogue or Digital the answer is eventually Analogue but certainly not with the current elemental and chip based technology. The time it will will happen is when we develop "organic computing". There are some early signs of research into the cellular structure of Neurons and associated storage of information in simulated brain cells and memory. But we are at the early stages and I am personally doubtful whether it is a scientific journey we should take at this time of such cultural ignorance. So as you ponder what is AI you should perhaps consider the nature of human intelligence at all and the glory of what it is to have a mind generations ahead and already infinitely more capable than any we are likely to fabricate in this so called "Modern world". Party on.

I wish there was a betting pool for every time Matt Ferrell was proven incorrect because he believed some marketing hype. I would be a billionaire.

I invented an analogue computer myself, back in the 70's. I proposed using the pulse frequency of a rectangular (digital) waveform as the physical variable. Summation would correspond to integration, driving a pulse generator. Differentiation would be via subtraction, again driving the pulse frequency. I'm not sure whether it would work or not, but it could be very useful if it does.

It is a truism, "you can't keep reducing the size of components forever." ... however, with the ever increasing speeds, I suspect you can upgrade the materials for those components... rather than silicon (semi conductor), use silver at the speed and temperature that it acts like a semiconductor... Or switch to magnetic processing to spin electrons around the component rather than through them. Also, a conformal coating of diamond (vapor deposit) would go a long way to ejecting unwanted heat.

A good complementary development to the modern analog computer is the ongoing "second age of microcomputers", which has had a watershed moment lately through gradual consumerization in custom PCB design, low-cost microcontrollers and FPGAs, making it possible for hobbyists to manufacture dream machines deviating from the mainstream PC architecture. There is even a project called "Tiny Tapeout" that allows you to publish an ASIC design and get it anthologized with hundreds of other hobby designs on one chip. There's a whole menagerie of retrocomputer-styled designs being made using these components, from the little ESP32-VGA, Agon Light and Neo6502 to more ambitious FPGA boards like the C256 Foenix and Commander X16. At first glance, they're nostalgic toys, but they signal a further decoupling of personal computing from industrial applications, an important counterbalance in an era where everyone complains about how much our devices and data are not really under our control.

a general purpose, multi-function device is great, but it'll never be as good at a specific task as a device built to do that ONE task as efficiently and effectively as possible. As for analog physics, think of what's faster, pushing a button that activates an actuator that pushes a ball, or just pushing the ball yourself?

I think analog has a great future in large language models and other AI, which is fortunate because generative AI is currently the fastest growing use of digital computation and the energy it requires. The evidence for this is that LLMs continue to function even when the weights and computations are quantized down to, say, 4 bits of precision for models designed to run on small systems. Four bits corresponds to a need for voltage accuracy of only 6.25% in an analog implementation, which should be easy to achieve. I don’t know how easy it would be to implement algorithms like the back propagation, which is used in training, in an analog form, but my guess is that it shouldn’t be difficult.

In 1971 analog computing was one of the engineering classes I was required to take to get an engineering degree. Generally the process was similar to what you show at 10:27 in your video. It was very helpful to use when looking at dynamic systems. You programed the system by turning dials and moving jumper wires so there was no easy way to store you program and reprogram the system. To create a practical analog computer you would need to develop digitally controllable capacitors, resistors and transistors.

As undergrad student in 1968 in Sydney Uni I saw demo of analog computing. Target system was a pendulum, which was modeled in a hand built electrical analog computer. Output was a voltage. It was configured to run on same time scale as a physical pendulum. Both pendulum and very large voltmeter were set up side by side, and pendulum and analog computer set running at same time. Pendulum and voltmeter needle mirrored each other for perhaps a minute and we’re still doing so when lecturer shut them down.

Analog computing certainly has its uses, but not even hybrid devices are going to replace the main use cases of supercomputers. For one, measurement is as precise as the measurement device, which is basically always discreet. For example, if it can measure mass in nanograms, then any difference smaller than that cannot be measured. However, more importantly, analog computers are task-specific machines. Making task-specific digital chips has historically been incredibly expensive, but that's changing now, with Intel, TSMC, Tower and others making custom chips. Custom digital chips built to solve specific problems can also save 95% and more of the energy compared to general-purpose digital computers - it depends on the problem.

6:43 so far I feel like this video isn't about analog vs digital computing and more about mechanical vs digital (not even mechanical vs electronic) ... Both digital and analog computers can be done in both electrical and mechanical ways. Hybrid computers are something that will happen though.

You mentioned using analog computers to calculate heat flow in objects. I remember using nonlinear partial differential equations to model heat flow in a metal bar from a point source. Bessel functions were used in the process of calculating the heat flow.

Imagine an analog computer AI assistant that was nothing but an analog microphone, an analog computer, and an analog speaker, but you could hold a conversation with it just like ChatGPT. That would be crazy.

Your quick shout out to Kiffness video Hold onto my fur (I like it) was awesome! More cat video references please!

Large analogue system's will probably be better at predicting / controlling chaotic events. The whole point of "expert systems" is to digitize more analogue like actions and observations.

There is so much analogue in industy. Instumentation devices send 4-20mA signals and control valves are controlled by 4-20mA outputs sent by PLCs. I'm sure the cooling on data centres is controlled by analogue valves and PID. Most electrical networks still use analogue measuring transformers and generator excitation and other complex feedbacks use PID. Full digitalisation has only occured in cyber and the internet.

Although I'm now retired, I well remember studying analog computers in the 70s and having to perform the math in order to correctly program the system. It is true that the accuracy of an analog computer is far greater than digital, chip/computer designers elected to choose speed and convenience over accuracy. It is only today that society is beginning to appreciate the advantages of analog systems, a great example is the rediscovery of music from turntables and albums. There are many aficionados and music lovers, like me, who still enjoy the sound of an analog album far more than its digital counterpart, regardless of the digital format used to playback the digitized performance. I'm typing this on a regular laptop, and I recognize the convenience of it, I'm just unconvinced that its the be all and end all. I believe there is a huge future market for analog computers/circuits that has been awaiting the need for greater accuracy and dramatically reduced power availability, measuring the health of bridges comes to mind; thousands of sensors reporting on stresses within individual components, all done in real time". At any rate, thanks for this insightful video, as always it was thought provoking and time well spent!

I was most fascinated by the analog chips ability to operate really effective & efficient image recognition software. *BTW did u hear about the lost Disney sodium vapor method? How it's been rediscovered. The Corridor Crew YT channel just came out with a video where they collabed with a guy who figured out how to do this lost art in filming and media. It's actually a game changing aspect. I recommend looking into it. It gives us the ability to not have to stress and mess with all the green screen effects just to still have those look off.. I had no idea how fascinating this lost art was and the effects it had on some amazing classic movies that had such a great unique look that modern movies just don't produce but I'm really hoping we this this method skyrocket in use thru out the film industry. As well as a return of 2D Animation and other forms of creative media.

So how does this analog revival mesh with the emergence of quantum computing? I'd love to see a follow on episode talking about this. Love your content!

I think as part of the digital computers portion, the sequential bit CAN be eliminated if needed. We actually do this in a number of cases, and it's called hardware acceleration. It requires making a physical piece of hardware that can do the calculation in one operation that would normally take multiple steps. For analogue computing this hardware acceleration is in many cases a mandatory step.

Dang, what a neat topic! This is my favorite video of yours I've seen in a while. I'm excited to see what components of compute are better suited to analog hadware. The power savings sure are enticing for applications where one thing needs to do a very specific job for a long time.

I personally view analog computing as simply "unprotected digital computing". Correct me if I'm wrong. Digital computing is essentially gating electricity such that you can move electricity along logic corridors to create predictable outcomes by compressing a whole range of analog signals into 2 (zero and one). The compression is an engineering solution that allows us to concern ourselves much less with signal clarity and correction, and deal instead in these coarse bits. Of course, the compression and gating also is a huge waste of the actual electrical signal. The analogy is like trying to watch TV through a white blanket sheet. Instead of the high fidelity of the electrical signal itself, you get 0 and 1. Taking off the protective layer provides us with a ton of untapped signal to play with... but it also comes with its own share of hairy issues. Noise and such. Signal correction?

This video takes the cake of the most buzz words and least amount of substance that isn't talking solely about 'a.i.'..

Be very careful with the desuperheater on your home HVAC system. These systems use a simple heat exchanger to transfer the heat from the heat pump working fluid to the domestic hot water, but the catch is that this happens at high temperatures (duh). If you have hard water (many, if not most, municipal water supplies are hard water to varying degrees), the heat exchanger will quickly cause the minerals to plate out of the water onto the heat exchanger surfaces. The result is that the heat exchanger becomes less efficient over time and will eventually clog up completely. To combat this, you would need to add a water softener with a high enough capacity to feed the hot water supply. Such a water softener is very expensive to buy and maintain. The alternative is to have your heat exchanger cleaned out every year, which is time-consuming and messy. To be fair, electric and gas water heaters also have this problem with their heating elements, but electric hot water heaters have cheap and easily replaceable heating elements, and gas tanks typically directly heat the the outside of the tank, so there is nothing that can really clog up.

I think the analogy could be extended between analog and digital similarly to interpretations of quantum theory. There are empirically equivalent interpretations of discrete versus non-discrete mathematical models. Now I will go as far as to say that analog is analogous to nature. While we may be able to mathematically model certain features discretely, they always fail to take into account features “outside” of their defined system. This is why we can theorize with mathematics about something 50 years before we can prove it with physics. It also demonstrates the systematic way in which science goes about discovering versus how humans or conscious agents do.

@Matt, very good video. FYI: Standard digital microprocessors actually operate in an analog world. The only real differences are comparators that separate signals into high and low voltages(1's and 0's) and storage as a high or low voltage. We assign meaning to patterns of these stored voltages like the ASCII table.

Thank you for making this video!

I was waiting for you to talk about near lossless data storage for music & photography because of the recent analog chip breakthroughs. Storing analog on a chip will be a real game changer in those fields. Being able to record & copy perfect analog signals will make vinyl records, tape, & film redundant. That's going to have such a huge impact.

Die deutsche Übersetzung ist zauberhaft. Mit leicht amerikanischen Akzent. Aber sehr gut zu verstehen! The German translation is magical. With a slight American accent. But very easy to understand!

funny look at our bodies. They are made of multiple sub systems. Why not combine both digital and analog

The discovery of a room-temperature superconductor would have enormous technological significance. It has the potential to address global energy challenges, enhance computing speed, enable innovative memory-storage devices, and create highly sensitive sensors, among a multitude of other possibilities.

I agree, I had almost thought of starting a program myself to create programmable analog neural network due to the development of MEMRistors and other analog components

Honestly, the idea of marrying Analog sensors, that can detect change without need of direct constant power, and a Digital always on Hub of information, just made me think were not far from cyborg / android bodies. The digital mind, requiring the more immediate power source (similar to a regular brain) being able to read feedback from sensor points, that dont require as much power until triggers occur that activate them. Maybe Im thinking too far out on it, but this seems closer than it has in the past. If Analog memory can be created, where previous outputs can be retained at significantly lower energy retention costs, rather than constantly having to generate new ones, then yeah, I can see prior reference-able memory becoming a real thing, and maybe then Assembly Intelligence (what i call AI lately) can start to store past "experiences", and then were not far off from actual AI (Artificial Intelligence) Interesting but Chilling Stuff

I don't mind the idea of combine the best of digital and analog computing but it feels a bit short sighted. The furture isn't either but bio-chemical computing where we don't use 1 and 0 but a breath of options in the same way our brains work.

The fun fact is that both clocks were digital, and not analog. You could argue that the mechanical oscillator of a traditional clock is analog, but the quartz oscillator of the electronic clock is also analog. The all those gears constitute digital, even though not binary, dividers. The display only seems analog because the frequency of the mechanical oscillator may be too high and the movements may be too tiny to observe.

This material deserves a previous one just explaining key concepts involving the final message. It is not easy to capture the essence of analog computers. Anyway, today I discovered your site. Good insightful material thanks for sharing this.

I will be forever grateful to you, you changed my entire life and I will continue to preach on your behalf for the whole world to hear you saved me from huge financial debt with just a small investment, thank you Stacey Macken.

What we need is a programming language to create digital blueprints of analog circuits. lets say I got a specific task that an analog computer would be great for, but I only have the skillset of a digital programmer. I would write software that describes the function of the analog computer, then a compiler runs its algorithm to model my code as a circuit. then I could simulate the operations of the analog chip using modern digital components, and I would tweak my code until it preforms as intended. then I would send it of to a manufacturer (either a simple one that crate PCBs or a more advanced one that makes silicon wafer chips). Then I get it in the mail and it works (hopefully) this kind of language would enable more people to understand what analog computing is and what it could do.

analog clock actually also move in steps they r controlled by a crystal oscillator much the same as digital clock and even a pure analog device will have resolution (the minimum step) determined by our instruments, designs, and components there is no infinite, thats only in theory still, the range is gonna be much larger than any digital resolution

Thanks Matt, this a great followup to the Veritasium vid on Mythic

Most of what you describe is also true for digital ASICs. The question is not CPUs vs analog circuits but analog vs digital ASICs. A digital ASIC can also operate a specific function "instantly" and will do so massively more efficient than a general purpose computer. It's currently completely speculative if an analog implementation could be more efficient.

9:52 that's not truly an analog clock either, it only shows the time every second. Like as in the temperature example at the start, if it was analog it should be able to show fractions of a second too and change continously, but it only does in 'bits' (seconds).

We are approaching the limit of digital computing built on a Silicon substrate using MOS transistors. Heat generation is a limiting factor. Solutions might be improved cooling, selecting materials with lower resistance as well as shifting energy intensive functionalities to analog. The first two are being implemented, thus hybrid computing may be the next step.

Dallas OR and The Dalles OR are about 150 miles from each other. One is rain forest and the other a desert, that's a pretty huge distinction when talking about water usage.

Saw a video about a battleship targeting computer from WWII. You’d set the distance, wind speed, etc. It would also consider the speed and tilt of the ship. It was 100% mechanical with all kinds of cams and linkages to calculate the proper firing solution.

Amdahl’s Law is good to know and keep in mind, but its conclusions only apply to a fixed workload. The world is constantly finding more and more ways to handle and crunch more and more data. As the workloads increase, so will the need for more and more parallel computing.

Best playground accident memory: 5th grade, went up those yellow enclosed tube slide, my (bigger than me) friend Jackson was coming down like a Power Ranger. His foot connected with my nose. It didn't hurt so much as stinging then going numb, the main issue was the blood pouring out, I had to end recess right there and go to the nurse. I saw my sisters class on the way (they were lined up next to the wall for music class) and i waved to her completely forgetting how much blood I was coated in...

I just thought I would write because I’ve watched many of your videos now and I wanted to let you know that I like them. I find myself intrigued by so many of the titles of your videos and I never feel like I’ve been click baited. Your titles correlate exactly with your video and the content is extremely interesting but it’s also well thought out And very thought-provoking. So many content creators are just throwing up junk and you watch the video and they’ve just tried to cram a bunch of stuff. They pulled off of other peoples websites as quickly as possible. It’s not very coherent and I feel like I’ve wasted my time. You on the other hand are choosing topics that actually have relevance to people like me. I’m a middle-aged nerd involved in crypto industry have lots of life experience from Real Estate and vacation, industry science and religion. I consider myself well informed and knowledgeable about many topics in science politics engineering space astronomy. I’m just mentioning that because I want you to know that I’m a discerning viewer not some person with so little knowledge that they were dazzled by anything. Just the opposite. I have no trouble ending a video that’s boring or that has lied to me or that doesn’t deal with the topic that they’ve introduced in an intelligent way. I very much welcome opinions and judgments made by people that have spent time discerning the topic but I hate being treated like a sheep by biased content creators. So there’s a lot of like in your channel. You do conclusions with opinions and judgments, but you’re also leaving room for Different reasonable outcomes. The name of your channel is very apt and yet despite the fact that you are undecided, you do help me make decisions about many topics. It’s ironic but it’s very entertaining and informative. I really enjoyed your recent video about vertical solar panels and different forms of heating and energy storage. Lots and lots of material content that’s been, informative and entertaining and I encourage you to keep going. I have subscribed and set your channel to notify me and I do notice that your videos pop up where I can see them because I often click when I see them so I encourage you to keep going and thank you again for, the content.

Differential equations is just algebra with some calculus thrown into the mix. You get to solve these types of equations a lot when designing the control systems for robots. Spring equations are especially annoying to solve because they oscillate and you need to predict that oscillation or your robot wont be able take two steps without falling over.

analog has its place, but digital is the manner by which we make meaning of data - how do you store an analog signal, or process it - how do you quantify the size of any stored analog data given its emense fidelity - when it comes to logic, digital has the upper hand in both representation of process something and in storing it, and hardware i started off in the 80's creating flight simulators for the military and civilain domains - most were initially analog, but once digital came along everything changed for the better - we could now create repeatable and recordable scenarios, hardware massively downsized as did costs - we lost some fidelity, but as processors and memory improved this became a-non issue new tech like quantum computing, neural networks, comms and the such like perform so much better in analog - that is a given when fidelity is required - but to make meaning of something, digital comes to thre rescue when it comes to logic, storage and deriving meaning from data as humans, we are analog by nature (wet-ware) - it just we do not come with a manual on how we work in that analog state, so we use digital to make meaning

Not an expert on this, but my first thought watching this was that it seems music synthesizers is an area where hybrid computers have matured for decades. They started out analogue, then went hybrid, then some purely digital, and now back to hybrid. Many aficionados prefer the sound of the analogue circuitry because there's a slight randomness to them, whereas it's more convenient to store the sounds in a digital memory. There's even the recent electro-mechanical desktop synth called the "Audio Motor Synth MKII" that uses spinning motors to generate the sound, which I suppose echoes many electric organs invented in the early 20th century that used spinning tone wheels (that were invented to be miniature versions of fully mechanical church pipe organs).

Hybrid digital/analog system seems like the next logical step. With little changes in steps working toward the best. That way it is there without causing major headaches. Putting the parts that work together now and then finding correct ways to make the more difficult work later.

I have been working with computers since MsDos and dialup internet @ 28kb/s since the 1990's. Following that I pursued an education in computer science simply because it was the only thing nobody could explain to me. I've programmed ray tracing from scratch using linear algebra in 7 dimensions. Now I fully understand ones and zeros. In my last year of university I had to complete machine learning and artificial intelligence. It was my first child. I had to give it a goal, provide it with experience and it would give the best answer it could given the size of its brain. That was 7 years ago in 0/1 computing. Analog computing is fascinating. In theory, I believe that analog computing is like quantum computing. The 0/1 scream of traditional computation vs. the hum of analog and quantum computing. Let it hum and your answer wil be at of its point of harmonization.

Very interesting video. I'm reminded of a book I read a long time ago, and which I really ought to re-read, called "The Micro revolution revisited" by Peter Large. One fundamental concept he mentioned, which has always stuck with me, is the idea of "the Universal Machine" - a machine which can be infinitely reprogrammed with different instructions to perform infinitely different tasks. He is, of course, talking about the unique properties of a microprocessor. This is something that cannot fundamentally be replicated with an analogue computer, and thus, they are not universal machines. The idea that analogue computers will play a bigger part in the future is, therefore, I suspect, going to be somewhat limited. The best we can perhaps envision, is the kind of thing we've seen come out of Hollywood sci-fi - a bio neural network interfaced to a digital computer providing input and output. Though I'd be happy to be surprised by new and different innovations.

To me this makes a lot of sense for AI. The vectors that embed the meaning of a word or sound or visual really don't have to be 100% precise. As has been demonstrated by the fact that several quantization methods (most notably the 1.58 bitnet) only lose very minimal performance compared to the full 16 bit float parameters. So if we can not only save significant amounts of data-sizes by going less precise, but also save 10 to 100 times the energy consumption by going analog, that would just make perfect sense. I mean, the fact that a full human brain can function on about 20 Watts of power, demonstrates that we definitely have a long way to go in terms of figuring out how to create "good enough" intelligent systems with vastly more energy efficient methods. Edit: I also just realized that that could be where illusions of free will stem from. In our digital systems, everything is pre-determined and any errors caused by noise are filtered out. But in analog systems random noise is acceptable as long as it's below a certain level. And that noise can of course add a bit of randomness, which makes the system slightly less deterministic, slightly more random, and may give the impression that it might have some kind of free will. But of course, that's not the case, because the system didn't choose the noise that was influencing it. But I digress, that was just a fun realization I just had.

In one of its iterations, the mining company that has held a presence in my state, longer than it's been a state, used a beautifully made European mechanical computer about the size of a three-drawer dessert to calculate payroll in one particular city. It was made around 1904.

I know very little about either, but looks like analog computing is great thing to connect with tinyML movement. From what I can tell after watching this great vid is that analog solutions are far less general than digital ones, and positioning them on the edge in large quantity might play to the advantage and set the whole genre for faster development.

interesting video! somewhat oddly enough as a plumber that also happens to have a bfa in sculpture and only a handful of years ago started playing with modular synths ends up on a video about analog computing and kinda understands a lot of what you are talking about from my experiences with modular synths, my art background and even intrigued by that old water run computer .. forgot where I was going with this... ??? thumbs up!!

The videos on this channel are so polished and interesting. Well done.

The comparison between the moon landing tech and the modern smart phone while impressive, really discounts the human labor that went into reaching the moon

Funny, as an AV systems integrator I’ve been saying for years that ASP’s maybe superior to DSP’s especially when it comes to sampling reality. Then I heard the latest Cisco switches are now using audio analog chips to achieve greater bandwidth. The future will be interesting

I work within the energy sector and have been informed that a single data centre catered for AI alone is expected to consume as much power as two USA cities. Can't recall which cities they were. This alone leads me to appreciate the idea of shifting away from digital technologies and returning to the use of analog systems.

I've been looking out for a book on hybrid computing for years. Couldn't find any! Nearest to that were books on control engineering. I did a short course on hybrid computing at year 3 of my computer science degree. It was really really easy! Gosh, I just did a Google and so many book references came up😮. The results of this search is vastly superior to the many searches I did in the last few years!

I believe one of the main excitement of analogue computer is quantum computer 👌 these are just new age analogue computer for Quantum physics (different equations than most physics and the example in the video) that will be use to simulate/ calculate / predict quantum system 😮 which is not just faster or more energy efficient it's just not possible in a timely manner to do with discrete numbers (for now at least ) for other than really small system like few atoms or molecules I'd be interested actually to see a video on quantum computer with that approach and not the it's going to break encryption bit which is old at this point 😅

Nice video. Minor comment: At 12:58, the charts and data used there show a date of "March 14, 2025" in the bottom corner. The Future is here, indeed! (But this is most likely not your err, but the err of the CS Professor who created it.)

Some of these analog chips work in the same way as old OBD1 car ECUs: my Toyota's reports all issues and sensor problems as measurements of voltage with altered settings indicating something needing cleaning or actually breaking. After seeing how far some car companies are going for efficient stepdown from 48 to 12 volts, and how smart phones really haven't changed or evolved for several years... honestly I think we're closer to that maximum than we think. I don't think it's exactly to Moore's idea, but I think that heat generation and a mix of battery and size constraints are gonna be the next real limitation.

Spiking neural networks are something of a mix of analog and digital. Information is transferred by discrete pulses, but gets processed in an analog way by the neurons. Very energy efficient, and known to be able to solve complex stuff (I'm using one to compose this comment right now).

There are tremendous challenges with analog computers in two directions. First is noise and therefore challenges in scaling down the size of components. That means relatively analog computers are very large compared to digital ones for the same compute power. The point of solving things quickly is that the analog computer solves a specific problem. Our digital computers solve a large range of problems. Anyone who has worked in analog computing (and they were standard in control theory classes back in the day) know that they have to be reconfigured and scaled for each problem. So, yes theoretically they can take less energy than digital computers. So, can asynchronous computers (ones that don't run on a master clock). The problem is that they have other limitations. A potentially better use would be as a co-processor. Where a specific computation is managed by an analog engine under the control of a digital computer.

This brought to mind how earlier this year researchers were starting to look at simultaneous and heterogeneous multithreading (SHMT). Which showed about a 1.96 speed increase while using 15% less energy.

My take is that we will always need digital computing. Analog computing has always shown promise and usefulness. We just need to figure out how to join the two in ways which work in harmony.

That Analog Thing looks like a beautiful analog sound synthesizer.

I’m a long time sub. Used to listen in English My main language is PT-BR, UKposts it’s automatically selecting to me. I tried with alternative dub. It’s amazing! This it’s the best good example of AI

This video reads like so many other speculative science printed media articles one used to read in pop science magazines and the like - "one day we might have solar cell collector arrays orbiting around the Earth, beaming down electrical power through invisible streams of microwaves", like. Of course nothing ever came of any of that. Limitations with digital computers aren't necessary actual limitations, but rather limitations in ourselves that we need to get over. 8-bit digital computers CAN process larger numbers than 256 discrete states, you do it in software, paying the price in speed of calculations and storage space needed for the code and temporary data. Amdahl's law is only a limit if you can't change the nature of the problem you're attacking to go around it. Replace the algorithm to include fewer or no sequential processing steps, or subdivide the problem into smaller chunks that each can be parcelled out to individual CPU cores - things of that sort. We didn't get to where we are today by only seeing problems, instead of potential solutions. We have digital computers because they're flexible, reliable and anywhere from reasonably to extremely powerful. Analog machines, well, not so much really. An analog computer built to do one thing can't do another (like, forget about adding new features through software patches - all the "patching" you'll be doing will be hardware), and they don't return precisely the same answer every time. Digital computers have margins of error as well, but their errors are dependable, predictable. Analog computer errors also would have the potential of changing and growing over time as the machine is used, due to wear and tear. Will there be no room for analog computers in the years ahead? It would be silly and irresponsible to completely dismiss them (one just has to remember that famous IBM boss back in the 1950s who "predicted" six computers or whatever it was would be sufficient to cover the needs of the entire world), but replacing digital computers in general/on a large scale? No way, forget it.

I'm going into the industrial automation side of things and there's definitely, and still are, places where analog is used. There's a reason why the PLC has an analog input/output card. I've seen analog tech still used in safety circuits as if you push an emergency stop a relay sends a signal to open the circuit preventing operation. Having a system like that where the PLC manages it would be less reliable.

Japan made HDTV via analog but the US wasn't satisfied and demanded a digital version.

He also mentioned years before significant power consumption improvements that we've been experiencing. I have one of the most powerful laptops that has ever existed... 17W of power. Oh, also... cooling is super easy with it and the fan hardly ever even kicks on. The analog clock that you had in the B-Roll... was stepping for each second. Most do.