IBM describes analog AI chip that might displace power-hungry GPUs

IBM Research has developed a mixed-signal analog chip for AI inferencing that it claims may be able to match the performance of digital counterparts such as GPUs, while consuming considerably less power. The chip, which is understood to be a research project at present, is detailed in a paper published last week in Nature …

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Going back to their roots

When they say analog, they mean typewriters

When they say non-human intelligence, they mean monkeys.

Now if only they can reduce the number of monkeys to a finite number, (what's the IBM euphemism for redundancy ?) they can become profitable

[Inventor of the Marmite Laser]

Ah analogue. IBM will never take it further: analogue is so old school. I remember in the 1970s setting up flow computers - flow=√(head X pressure / temp), based PID controllers and some specialised analogue. calculation devices doing glass batch float layer thickness and glass furnace power control, all using analogue tech.

None of this new fangled digital stuff, just 741 op amps (and maybe the odd CMOS device if huge input impedance was needed, capacitors and patience.

[Archivist]

Bah, you had it easy

I had to work with 709s and JFETS for high impedances.

[elDog]

Cut my baby teeth on a Pacer analog/digital system in the late 60s

It made a bit of sense to me - a bunch of analog devices to control flow and digital to supply the inputs and interpret the outputs. I think one of the primal examples was solving the traveling salesman problem almost instantaneously while the digital beast (IBM 7094) was still slogging along.

But the allure of working with just clean bits (on/off) was too much and the Pacer went out the door.

https://www.analogmuseum.org/english/collection/eai/pacer_700/