Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Hardware Technology

Chaotic Computing In Practice 199

Posted by Hemos from the using-the-machines dept.
codyhess writes "The Economist published a great article detailing efforts to use Chaos in computing - "Speaking at the American Physical Society's annual March conference, William Ditto of the University of Florida told of his efforts to create a 'chaotic computer'." Dr. Ditto can create standard logic gates (AND, OR, etc) that output a value according the their chaotic threshhold. Different logic operations can be performed by simply changing the threshhold, making an incredibly flexible computer that can perfom different functions instantaneously."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Chaotic Computing In Practice More

Chaotic Computing In Practice

Comments Filter:

  • Chaotic Computing... (Score:5, Funny)

    by hookedup ( 630460 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @12:31PM (#8770262)
    Nothing new, I've been doing that since Windows 3.11! :)

  • Anyone with the misfortune of reading my source... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...is already well versed in chaotic computing.
    • ...is already well versed in chaotic computing.

      You wish.

      To protect the perpetrator I won't mention his name, but here's a warning about people developing off in a corner, by themseleves rather than collaborating with their peers.

      I worked for two years at one job before learning there was another programmer (besides the other two I worked with.) The group I worked with remained within the same office or no more than a room away and we frequently bounced ideas off each other, creating some damn fine pro

  • I suppose this beats my design (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 05, 2004 @12:32PM (#8770270)
    I was just going to hire really crazy programmers, and change their meds based on what I needed.

  • When I do chaotic computing... (Score:4, Funny)

    by dolo666 ( 195584 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @12:32PM (#8770274) Journal
    ... I type in random characters in Google and hit "I feel Lucky".

  • Argh! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Knight Thrasher ( 766792 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @12:33PM (#8770275) Journal
    Skynet is being born!! .. or not!! But I like the idea of logically flexible computers, and fear it at the same time. Sometimes, especially after work, it's nice to come home to something that can think in a straight line.
  • Big deal! The OSDN coffeemakers crunch both numbers and dry-roasted beans. Chaos is for people who don't are afraid to use caffeine!

  • Google was no help... (Score:5, Funny)

    by jea6 ( 117959 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @12:34PM (#8770284)
    Google was no help...in translating this article into English.

  • Woa (Score:4, Funny)

    by bawb ( 637210 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @12:34PM (#8770291)

    I first read that as Catholic Computing.

    Pearly Gate logic will have to wait a few years yet, I guess.
    • Hah! GOtta brush up on your PEARL for that one...

    • Re:Woa (Score:5, Funny)

      by HalfOfOne ( 738150 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @01:48PM (#8771091)
      Catholic computing:

      The system has encountered an unrecoverable error and IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT. I SAW YOU pausing just a little too long before closing those suggestive webcam ads. Now go burn that copy of The Da Vinci Code, wash your eyes out with holy water after your clandestine mission to The Passion, and go out and buy a wooden yardstick to smack your fingers with every time you have an innapropriate thought.

      And spit out your gum.
    • Catholic Computing

      ah yes so that would be the purgatory processor ?

      Not computing heaven and not quite computing hell.

  • April Fool? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Windsurfer ( 30408 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @12:34PM (#8770292)
    Check out the date of the article - April 1st...
    • This sounds completely feasable. I'm suprised it has taken someone this long to do something like this.
    • If you Google "Ditto Chaos Computer", you find (among others) this link [gtalumni.org].

      Apparently, Dr. Ditto is something of an expert in chaos theory, and has/is applying it to more that the field of computing.

      BTW, how come no knee-jerk commentary from the peanut gallery on how Dr Ditto is "outsourcing" to India? Or did the reference to his collaborator from Chennai, Sudeshna Sinha, completely escape everyone.

      ---anactofgod---

    • Re:April Fool? (Score:2, Informative)

      by NeedleSurfer ( 768029 )
      Actually I was providing technical support at that convention, an incredible one it was, 60% computers were Macs (it seems Apple claims about scientific computing moving to Macs is actually true) 6 or 7 were Linux laptops and the rest were the obligatory Windows machines. The subject covered were, well... exotics, if not esoterics but very interesting, I was able to listen to quite a few of them and actually understood what they were talking about 70% of the time (the talks about atom spin control and predi

  • Not chaotic? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rkane ( 465411 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @12:34PM (#8770293) Homepage Journal
    I am not a physicist, engineer, or scientist (or anything else qualified to answer this) but it seems to me, the simple minded one, that once you start controlling something, it isn't chaotic. I mean- if they are basing decisions on this, then it can't be completely chaotic, can it? How can you derive an AND, OR, etc, from chaos without controlling it (thus negating the chaos). Can someone dumb this down a little for those of us who aren't in the know?

    • Re:Not chaotic? (Yes, you can control chaos) (Score:5, Informative)

      by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @12:49PM (#8770453)
      Chaotic systems are actually quite controlloable in a very interesting way. The key property that makes a chaotic system so unpredictable is divergence -- if two copies of the system differ by delta, that delta will grow exponentially in time (doubling according to a coefficient call the Lyapunov coefficient [wolfram.com]). Yet, the divergence is never arbitrary. Instead, the divergence in chaotic systems happen within a space called the strange attractor [cmu.edu] - the diverging trajectories stay within in the attractor zone even as the split from each other.

      If you map the strange attractor and nudge the system are the right point of the cycle, you can push the system into what ever mode of behaviro you want. Although you cannot predict the longterm behavior of the chaotic system, you can perturb it periodicaly to stabiize it or rapidlly shift its behavior. Scientists are looking at how to use this chaotic control theory to control unstable systems such as ultrahigh power lasers, manuerable jet aircraft, and heart tissue.

      The key controlling a chaotic system is to understand how the chaotic system diverges (the shape of the strange attractor) and use that knowledge to deftly inject perturbations at just the right moment.
      • manuerable jet aircraft

        Eww, why would someone want to fly in that?

      • Re:Not chaotic? (Yes, you can control chaos) (Score:4, Informative)

        by S3D ( 745318 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @04:09PM (#8772618)
        That's too narrow definition of chaotic system, because Lyaponov coeefficients and strange attractors realted only to dynamical systems [wikipedia.org] wich have a toplogy - that is some underlying continuity. However there is another type of object which exhibit chaotic behavior, though only in infinite areas - discrete objects like cellular automata [wikipedia.org], which have no notion of divergence, and discussed more in term of complexity [wikipedia.org] This chatic computing idea is in fact related to cellular automata. Cellular automata is a perfect example simple, completly deterministic discrete system, which behavior very difficalt and sometimes impossible to predict
        • That's too narrow definition of chaotic system, because Lyaponov coeefficients and strange attractors realted only to dynamical systems which have a topology - that is some underlying continuity.

          Good point. Most of the chaos-control research that I have seen focuses on physical/dynamic systems.

          discrete objects like cellular automata, which have no notion of divergence

          Yes and no. With CA's the divergence can be expressed in terms of the state difference between initially similar configurations.

    • Re:Not chaotic? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by forand ( 530402 )
      I think it is about scale. Think about it this way: all of physics that we know, gravity exempted, is proabablistic: we don't know what is going to happen at any given stage just what MIGHT happen. However this is only true on a quantum level, Newton's Laws still hold, mostly, and we don't worry about sponaneously appearing inside the sun because we COULD it is just extremely unlikly. Similarly if you make a big enough system out of chaotic states or in this case random assembly then you can find pattern
    • There are some problems with the article: it makes claims that aren't backed up. So what's new on slashdot? Anyway, here are the gory details from my point of view. The original source reference [csuohio.edu] appears to suffer from the same problem.

      The gist of the new idea is a clever way to create a special type of gate whose dynamical threshold value can be modified to implement one of several possible logic gates. An interesting idea, but not computationally revolutionary. These gates would still implement the
  • Anybody want to form a company with this technology and start manufacturing Discordian computers? "Holy Chao Computers" has a nice ring to it.

  • Sounds similar to... (Score:5, Informative)

    by robslimo ( 587196 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @12:35PM (#8770311) Homepage Journal
    analog computers of old. IIRC they were used for ballistics calculations and similar by the military.

    Here [vwh.net] is an example.

    Look [google.com]into what kind of mathematical operations can be realized with multiplying DACs.
    • "analog computers of old."

      All signals are analog. Digital is just a way to manipulate analog for logic. The fact that they found another way to manipulate analog for logic is not suprising. What is suprising is that it has taken this long.

      • Missing the point entirely (Score:5, Insightful)

        by IncohereD ( 513627 ) <mmacleod@ieeeEULER.org minus math_god> on Monday April 05, 2004 @03:30PM (#8772202) Homepage
        Yes, digital computers may use analog signals, but the basic operations of a digital computer (AND, OR, XOR, etc.) are fundamentally digital operations. They quantize the analog signals into 1s and 0s, and output quantized signals based on those digital values (of course, with some amount of analog error).

        An analog computer does no such thing. If it wants to add two signals, it adds them. In analog. You can do integrals and derivations in analog as well, amongst other things.

        A digital computer may have to use analog signals to operate on some level, but that does not make it an analog computer.
    • From the Lockheed Martin Analog computing link "A picture of a GEDA center showing (from the left) an R-2 unit, two L-2 units, (maybe) an N-2 unit behind the woman, (maybe) two L-1 units and another recording unit between the women."
      • "Tomorrow I want you to take that R2 unit into Anchorhead and have its memory flushed.... and while you're at it, take the L1 units, the L2 units, that N2 unit behind Aunt Beru...no, don't get Aunt Beru's memory flushed, take the N2 unit that's behind her--never mind, I'll do it myself!"
  • After the Yes or No to be the only answer for a computer, The bit have another one :-)

  • I'm confused (Score:5, Funny)

    by FreemanPatrickHenry ( 317847 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @12:37PM (#8770329)
    Dr. Ditto

    Wait...Rush Limbaugh has a Ph.D?

  • But is it easy to work with? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Chief Technovelgist ( 759322 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @12:38PM (#8770338)
    Sounds kind of like a quantum logic thinker [technovelgy.com], from one of Greg Bear's early books:

    "The QL is a monster to work with' he said..."It has no priorities, no real sense of needs or goals. It thinks, but it may not solve. Quantum logic can outline the center of a problem before it understands the principles and questions, and then, from our point of view, everything ends in confusion. More often than not, it comes up with a solution to a problem that is not stated. It does virtually everything but linear, time's arrow ratiocination."
    • Greg Bear is awesome. My favorite author and that particular story you mention was really good. I think I have all of his books. Anyone out there looking for great SciFi should definitely check him out.

      If you haven't read his Eon, Eternity and Legacy trilogy I highly recommend them. Eternity is my favorite book.

      Moving Mars was also very good and touched on some of the same QL stuff. Darwin's Radio was okay but I couldn't get into the sequel Darwin's Children. Blood Music was really good if a little creepy

  • Journalism at its best again (Score:3, Insightful)

    by underworld ( 135618 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @12:42PM (#8770382)
    They have also made a logic element out of a pair of leech neurons (nerve cells from blood-sucking worms) placed on a microchip. Dr Ditto readily admits that, like quantum computing, this technology is still in its infancy. But it certainly has potential--even though many people feel that existing computers are quite chaotic enough already.

    i think this paragraph really sums things up. the editor is such a moron as to explicitly state the obvious grammatical correlation between mathematically chaotic logic circuits and the general "chaos" users experience with their computers. and that preceded by a description that sounds like some kind of vampirian (or is it vampirical?), frankensteinian, technological monster. (rob zombie brings you "attack of the chaotic leech borgs"!).

    p.s. the chaotic leech borgs would be a good name for a band
    • For god's sake! THIS IS AN APRIL'S FOOL. Ditto may be an expert in chaos theory, but the content of the article makes no sense whatsoever to any trained scientist. The whole blood-sucking thing is hilarious (and an attempt to help the reader understand that this is an April's fool). The Economist really pulled your leg on this one! :) :) :) :D :D :D
      • For god's sake! THIS IS AN APRIL'S FOOL. Ditto may be an expert in chaos theory, but the content of the article makes no sense whatsoever to any trained scientist. The whole blood-sucking thing is hilarious (and an attempt to help the reader understand that this is an April's fool).

        Once again, people who have nothing better to do than to trick their friends with April Fool's jokes refuse to accept anything printed, published, posted, or spoken on the 1st day in April as truth.

        Hate to pop your bubble,

    • In your eagerness to pander to standard slashdot biases, you have completely missed the point that the last sentence was intended to be humorous, which is amply demonstrated by the fact that the very first paragraph of the article said that chaos in the mathematical sense does not mean unpredictability. Sheesh.

      OTOH, you might have been trolling, and I'm the sucker for replying... who knows :)

      • In your eagerness to pander to standard slashdot biases, you have completely missed the point that the last sentence was intended to be humorous, which is amply demonstrated by the fact that the very first paragraph of the article said that chaos in the mathematical sense does not mean unpredictability. Sheesh.

        Yeah, it's pretty pedantic to point out that the joke at the end of the article is factually in error. I think a better criticism of the joke is that it's lame. It's the kind of stupid joke that loc

  • IEEE Definition (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bimo_Dude ( 178966 ) <[bimoslash] [at] [theness.org]> on Monday April 05, 2004 @12:42PM (#8770383) Homepage Journal
    Apparently, this theory was first developed in 1996. Here is the IEEE Definition [computer.org] of chaotic computing.

    The way I see it (although I am not a mathematician), the major hurdle to realizing this is the fact that generating random numbers usually results in patterns.

    • Re:IEEE Definition (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pegr ( 46683 ) * on Monday April 05, 2004 @12:45PM (#8770403) Homepage Journal
      The way I see it (although I am not a mathematician), the major hurdle to realizing this is the fact that generating random numbers usually results in patterns.

      Perhaps it's a semantical argument, but if you are producing patterns, you're not producing random numbers...

      • Re:IEEE Definition (Score:5, Informative)

        by JGski ( 537049 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @12:53PM (#8770496) Journal
        Chaos != Random

        Chaos is a middle-ground between purely ordered and purely random. There is structure in chaotic systems, it's only that on short orders of time it appears random to human neural signal processing - this is largely a limitation of the human capacity to perceive rather than a characteristic of the system observed.

        • Chaos != Random
          Chaos is a middle-ground between purely ordered and purely random. There is structure in chaotic systems, it's only that on short orders of time it appears random to human neural signal processing - this is largely a limitation of the human capacity to perceive rather than a characteristic of the system observed.

          So is there such a thing as random at all? If we perceive something to be random, could not just as easily be ordered in a way we don't recognise?

          Or if random does exist, woul
          • So is there such a thing as random at all? If we perceive something to be random, could not just as easily be ordered in a way we don't recognise?

            Random is easy to define. According to my googling [google.com], 17 is The Most Random Number (despite a few spurious claims that it is 37, or 14).

            Seriously though, your point is correct. "Random" simply means that no predictable order is discernable. The definition, therfore, is entirely dependent on your method of discernment. If you analyze closely enough the events lea

            • If you analyze closely enough the events leading to the generation of so-called random numbers, you should be able to predict the output and thereby render it not random.

              But if that were the case (i.e. observation resulting in predictability), then I would assert that, regardless of the observation, the result is not random but merely pseudorandom (or in the case of online casinos and cryptography, "random enough"). Mere observation has nothing to do with whether or not it's random (quantum examples not

              • Re:IEEE Definition (Score:4, Informative)

                by jazmataz23 ( 20734 ) <jazmatician@nOspAm.yahoo.com> on Monday April 05, 2004 @02:50PM (#8771754)
                There's a great paradox here. A few quick points: an accepted definition of a random number is one whose algorithm for construction is at least as long as the number itself. i.e. the number 0.142857142857... is not random, because the minimal algorithm that will construct it is simply 1/7. Numbers generated by rolling a dice can only be described by listing the sequence of dice roll results that created them.

                Yes, most of the numbers in the space (0,1) are random. No, we cannot prove that any particular number is random. I *strongly* suggest reading The Dreams of Reason: The Computer and the Rise of the Sciences of Complexity by Heinz R. Pagels for an *excellent* treatment of these issues. An interesting point/counterpoint (with me being a bit of a troll at the outset, but I got props for him now) is here on slashdot is here [slashdot.org]

                jaz

              • So my (classic) question still stands. Is there such thing as random?

                Well, given that "random" is entirely a matter of perception, there really can be no platonic-ideal of randomness. Reality simply is what it is, and everything that happens, happens for one reason or another whether there's someone there to see it or not. It's essentially the same as the "tree falls in the woods" question*.

                Are we destined for our fate? Or do we choose our paths?

                Yes. (ha ha) The way I look at it, we choose our own pat

                • While I certainly enjoyed your reply, I must take issue with the idea of random being in any way related to perception. As you say, it is what it is and that stands alone. Kind of like your point of sound being related to perception. I say no, even if the sound is not heard, that does not make it any less of a sound.

                  Now that we've taken this topic as far off course as it can be, I going to run away and hide! ;)

  • my clone army (Score:2, Funny)

    by dmd ( 404 )
    Evil Scientist: My clone army will soon be complete!

    Secret Agent: Not so fast, Doctor Ditto!

  • Computing in a coffee cup (Score:5, Funny)

    by SmackCrackandPot ( 641205 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @12:47PM (#8770419)
    Reading this article reminds me of the Improbability Drive in the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.

    The last problem to be solved was to find a perfect source of randomness, which the galaxies best professors had been trying to solve for decades as whole departments had been built up on trying to solve this problem. Then one day, a brilliant student solves the problem by realizing a a cup of hot coffee provides this data. He is immediately awarded the highest Physics prize in the universe, and immediately lynched by his peers for being a smart-ass.

    • That's not how it goes. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Annirak ( 181684 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @01:45PM (#8771050)
      The real explanation is here [earthstar.co.uk]

      Then, one day, a student who had been left to sweep up the lab after a particulary unsuccessful party found himself reasoning this way:

      If, he thought to himself, such amachine is a virtual impossibility, then it must logically be a finite improbability. So all I have to do in order to make one, is to work out exactly how improbable it is, feed that figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea ... and turn it on!

      He did this, and was rather startled to discover that he had managed to create the long sought after golden Infinite Improbability generater out of thin air.

      It startled him even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynced by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn't stand was a smartass.

  • Kinda sorta. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blair1q ( 305137 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @12:47PM (#8770424) Journal
    Couple of thoughts:

    This isn't quite the same thing as having randomly perturbed input thresholds, which is how neurons work. And, as anyone who's tried it knows, neurons are only about 95% efficient in determining the correct result. It takes a lot of logical processing on top of the neural bitwise decisionmaking to distill the 95% to the 99% or so correct answer rate that constitutes "intelligent thought".

    And, they'd better look into real-world noise margin requirements for thresholding electrical switching decisions, or "chaotic" is all their output will ever be.
    • It takes a lot of logical processing on top of the neural bitwise decisionmaking to distill the 95% to the 99% or so correct answer rate that constitutes "intelligent thought".

      So what sort of magical new cell that you have discovered is involved in the logicification of neuronal input? I think you'll find that the magical cells are actually neurons themselves... :)

      -l

      • By "logic" I mean exactly that. Many neurons (millions) need to get involved, and they need to have a knowledge of logic impressed on them from outside.

        Provided the logic impressed from the outside is correct in the first place.

    • Uh, nothing you said in your post makes any sense. I wonder about a moderation system that gives you a +5 score.

      Neurons do not "work" by having randomly perturbed input thresholds. Are you talking about some weird computational architecture of your own design, perhaps? Then you should cite it. If it involves "bitwise decisionmaking", then it's a very special architecture indeed.

      Tell us more about this "intelligent thought" and how it corresponds to "correct answer rates". Those of us who have studi
      • Uh, what neurons have clearly defined input thresholds?

        What neurons even have constant input thresholds?

        15 years? Maybe if you studied harder you'd get to graduate sometime.

        P.S. If you know who Nick DeClaris and Stephen Grossberg are, then you know the guys who taught me. If you know who Hopfield, McCulloch and Pitts, and Amit, Gutfreund, and Sompolinksy are, then you know the papers I read in the first few days I was studying the artificial form of the science. Sadly, it hasn't changed much since th

        • We seem to be having a terminology gap. Unfortunately, this is not unusual for the Grossberg crowd. I'm not trying to flame, but the Cohen-Grossberg Theorem is not enough to rest one's laurels on. For some reason, that whole obsession with the stability/plasticity dilemma is really strange to me and (I believe) a majority of people in the field.

          Neurons always have a clearly defined functional behavior. So yes, a neuron with a given set of weights *does* have clearly defined behavior. And no, if you've
  • Basically, I invented a simple but mind-blowingly fast algorithm for solving complex equations:

    #include <stdlib.h>
    double solve(void) {
    return rand()
    }

    Sometimes, it will give you a root of x^2 - 7; other times, value of pi or phi. Once it even gave me the answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything!
  • But it certainly has potential--even though many people feel that existing computers are quite chaotic enough already.

    or is he just the 'friend' of this guy [slashdot.org]?

  • chaotic? i don't think so... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sebastopol ( 189276 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @12:55PM (#8770522) Homepage
    this is "self modifying hardware", similar to "self modifying code". but is it fair to call it chaotic? In a chaotic system, the process remains the same but the output varies. In this situation, both the process and the data change over time. Or can a chaotic system also be one where the rules change as well?? Experts??

    personally, SMC is a bitch to debug, I can't imaging how one would begin to debug THIS beast...

    • It is the hardware side that uses chaos, not the software. Details are sketchy in the article, but I believe they are looking at chaotic systems and tweaking the hardware to use different regions of behavior depending on the desired use.

      And, yes, there are reasons we're not all programming in LISP.
    • this is "self modifying hardware", similar to "self modifying code". but is it fair to call it chaotic? In a chaotic system, the process remains the same but the output varies.

      Uh, that's not true at all.
      blockquoth the article:

      Chaos, in the mathematical sense, is not unpredictability: chaotic systems can behave in a predictable and reproducible way. The catch is that the evolution of a chaotic system depends very sensitively on its starting conditions, which leads in the long term to behaviour that is

  • But this would still be limited to the confines of the Church-Turing hypothesis. Fundamentally, it doesn't seem to be a stronger model of computation. Even quantum computing is a different model than the Turing machine, however it is not yet known if it is strictly stronger. At a first glance, this just seems to be a novel way of making reconfigurable circuits. But can it beat the Turing machine? I doubt it...
    • Seems to me this might provide for a etch-a-scetch CPU or something.

      It wont upp the gigahurts, but it sounds nifty to reprogram my CPU to a new layout. Or even on the fly morphing CPU lay-outs .

      Using chaos isnt new, but leeches are. Somehow those leeches seem more interesting to me.

      "/Dread"
    • It's not even that novel. Look at the AI topic, "neural networks" and you will realise it's the same idea essentially. Neural networks are logic gates with thresholds.
    • A quantum computer is simply an implementation of a nondeterministic Turing Machine. It's not a different model in any way at all.

      Most people, when they say "Turing Machines", implicitly assume "deterministic Turing Machines". This is unfortunate, because Turing's Computational Theory is rich enough to describe many things beyond simple deterministic TMs.
  • This reminds me of the problem with two vendors who were working on the Minuteman I Missle System back in the 60's. One company used positive logic (0 = 0V, 1 = 5V) and the other company used negative logic (0 = 0V, 1 = -5V)

    So when it came time to connect the logic together the problem was discovered so a 6 foot cabinet called the "Coupler Rack" was built and installed to interface these two dissimilar logic/voltages.

    This rack was a good place to monitor the signals though since it interfaced the onboard
    • At least 0 was still 0 so a rogue launch was impossible thanks to Boeing and Autonetics! Amusingly (and not surprisingly), Autonetics went on to be part of Rockwell, now part of Boeing.

  • You might also consider... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Lendrick ( 314723 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @01:05PM (#8770628) Homepage Journal
    ...adding a good/evil axis to computer alignment. Because otherwise, if you get a chaotic computer, how do you know whether it's chaotic good, chaotic neutral, or chaotic evil?

    Better to have a computer with a good heart and a general distrust of authority than one which wants to enslave everyone and reduce the world to a desolate wasteland.
  • A computer that won't exactly say "1" and won't exactly say "0" either...EXACTLY like one of my past bosses when I needed a vacation day!
  • I think I was using the Windows version of that last week... all my AND gates turned into Bill gates! HA HA HA!

    http://www.fulcrumgallery.com

  • quantum post (Score:4, Funny)

    by kwoff ( 516741 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @01:12PM (#8770681)
    We're already seeing quantum computing, as this story is in two places simulataneously [slashdot.org]. Remember, you saw it here first, and second, on Slashdot.

  • Re: This sounds like a joke (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bomblaster ( 580308 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @01:14PM (#8770710)
    Dude
    Did you check the date on that Economist article.
  • making an incredibly flexible computer that can perfom different functions instantaneously.

    Instantaneously? Now that's a trick I'd like to see.

  • Logic gates that can be "programmed" to do any operation are pretty easy to implement in terms of regular transistors and binary logic.

    If, on the other hand, we start using multiple voltage levels as part of digital circuits, it is still more efficient to use them as part of elements with dedicated functions.

    Altogether, this doesn't seem like something that lets us do anything that we couldn't do before. The reason it isn't being done is probably that it's not useful (even FPGAs generally choose to fix t
  • They have also made a logic element out of a pair of leech neurons (nerve cells from blood-sucking worms) placed on a microchip.

    I remember for my System's Analyst and Design class my teacher mentioning how they were already wiring organic matter to computer chips. One unfortunate student who made the great mistake to vocalized his complete shock over this, from which this cynical and suggestive instructor bluntly responded to him, "Read a book!" Mind you this particular student had the appearance of a
  • using randomized algorithms to perform the same tasks, exactly, other than being performed at the hardware level?

  • Read the paper (Score:4, Informative)

    by TheSync ( 5291 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @04:37PM (#8772897) Journal
    Here is a paper [csuohio.edu] that describes using chaotic gates as "universal gates".

  • This sounds like nothing more than an FPGA (Score:3, Interesting)

    by skintigh2 ( 456496 ) on Monday April 05, 2004 @06:04PM (#8773727)
    with multiple images. Years ago a company I was working at had an FPGA that could store 4 images and switch between them every clock cycle, no chaos required.

    For those who don't know, an FPGA is a flexible computer chip. Imagine a motherboard full 100,000s or millions of solid state "glue logic" gates that could be re-aranged by little elves repeatedly, and that's an FGPA, but larger, and less expensive. You could build an 8088, then a DSP, then a fast FFT, a converter, then a crypto processor, whatever. Creative uses them on some soundblasters so the hardware (yes, the hardware) can be upgraded ith more features in the future. On mine they added a few digital effects and the ability to handle another few hundred MIDI voices.

Slashdot Top Deals

Scientists will study your brain to learn more about your distant cousin, Man.

Close