Veritasium
7 HN recommenders · recommended in 11 months, 2022–2025
21:42 · 13M views · Mar 1, 2022
Veritasium explains why analog computing may suit AI workloads, covering old analog computers, The Analog Thing and Mythic's analog chips that use flash memory for neural network inference. It argues digital hardware is hitting limits.
Treated as the accessible reference on analog computing for neural nets, especially the Mythic AI segment.
20 comments from Hacker News
Agreed. I've never really gotten into neural networks, most of the times I start but get distracted or bored/lost and suddenly enough a Vertiasium video pops up and about everything just slots into place, stuff you've glossed over or heard before just make sense. this video . Start at minute 4:00.
basicly, we can do things like matrix operations and differntial equations using specialized hardware that performs computation over analog signals rather than buidlign discrete systems. the end result is that we dont' need anywhere near the level of compute to do the job as its done using an analog of the physical process. here's two youtube videos that explain is much better than I could. [LINK] this video suffice to say, your average house fly exhibits behavior that absolutely dominates our best drones and with a fraction of the circuitry.
I found this Veritasium video interesting, about a company that is paring down models so they fit on analog chips, so the chips can be used in self-contained devices. It also appears that quantum computers may be even better for matrix math that transformers rely on. If all these hardware advances pan out... this video [LINK]
Veritasium has a good video about analog computers. It covers how they work, what they are used for, pros and cons compared to digital, what they look like today, a bit of the history and their possible future. this video
I think they're saying analog computers could be the future of computing. Veritasium explains it really well in general here (and demos the device) this video