Why old school generation should form the destiny of virtual computing
Analogue computers have been abandoned half of a century ago. But to push past the limits of contemporary day devices, it may be time for a blast from the past
TECHNOLOGY 22 July 2020
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Everett Collection Historical
AMID an epic haul of jewels and statues rescued from an historic Greek shipwreck, it turned into a lump of corroded timber and bronze that would seize the sector’s imagination. Pulled from the Mediterranean Sea in 1901, the Antikythera mechanism changed into an astonishingly state-of-the-art 2000-year-antique pc. The size of a shoebox, carrying chunky bronze gears rimmed with masses of triangular enamel, it changed into constructed to chart the paths of celestial our bodies and become able to addition, multiplication, subtraction and department – all by way of cranking a cope with.
Nearly half a century might bypass earlier than its importance became apparent. By that time, the arena had evolved a brand new breed of calculators: the digital computers we nonetheless use today. Powered by means of power rather than a hand crank, they have been a massive breakthrough and feature proved fast and powerful sufficient to hold the current global afloat.
But digital computers aren’t constantly the best tool for the task. Much of the mathematics used on the frontiers of current technological know-how, for instance, translates awkwardly into virtual era, wherein sure equations are cumbersome to solve. New processes are increasingly in demand inside the layout of artificial intelligence, too, where virtual computer systems struggle to mimic the complicated approaches of the human mind. As such, the trendy hardware is frequently too pricey and inefficient to use on this region.
Mechanical devices are not likely to be the answer. Even so, to higher meet nowadays’s challenges, researchers at the reducing fringe of computer improvement are trying to analogue strategies that have extra in common with the Antikythera mechanism than these days’s conventional computer systems. To save computing’s future, we may need …
Read extra: article/mg24732924-000-why-old-school-technology-should-shape-the-destiny-of-virtual-computing/#ixzz6VdO6P1Js
TECHNOLOGY 22 July 2020
New Scientist Default Image
Everett Collection Historical
AMID an epic haul of jewels and statues rescued from an historic Greek shipwreck, it turned into a lump of corroded timber and bronze that would seize the sector’s imagination. Pulled from the Mediterranean Sea in 1901, the Antikythera mechanism changed into an astonishingly state-of-the-art 2000-year-antique pc. The size of a shoebox, carrying chunky bronze gears rimmed with masses of triangular enamel, it changed into constructed to chart the paths of celestial our bodies and become able to addition, multiplication, subtraction and department – all by way of cranking a cope with.
Nearly half a century might bypass earlier than its importance became apparent. By that time, the arena had evolved a brand new breed of calculators: the digital computers we nonetheless use today. Powered by means of power rather than a hand crank, they have been a massive breakthrough and feature proved fast and powerful sufficient to hold the current global afloat.
But digital computers aren’t constantly the best tool for the task. Much of the mathematics used on the frontiers of current technological know-how, for instance, translates awkwardly into virtual era, wherein sure equations are cumbersome to solve. New processes are increasingly in demand inside the layout of artificial intelligence, too, where virtual computer systems struggle to mimic the complicated approaches of the human mind. As such, the trendy hardware is frequently too pricey and inefficient to use on this region.
Mechanical devices are not likely to be the answer. Even so, to higher meet nowadays’s challenges, researchers at the reducing fringe of computer improvement are trying to analogue strategies that have extra in common with the Antikythera mechanism than these days’s conventional computer systems. To save computing’s future, we may need …
Read extra: article/mg24732924-000-why-old-school-technology-should-shape-the-destiny-of-virtual-computing/#ixzz6VdO6P1Js
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