Analog and Hybrid Computer Programming

by Bernd Ulmann

As classic digital computers are about to reach their physical and architectural boundaries, interest in unconventional approaches to computing, such as quantum and analog computers, is rapidly increasing. For a wide variety of practical applications, analog computers can outperform classic digital computers in terms of both raw computational speed and energy efficiency. This makes them ideally suited a co-processors to digital computers, thus forming hybrid computers.



This second edition of "Analog and Hybrid Computer Programming" provides a thorough introduction to the programming of analog and hybrid computers. It contains a wealth of practical examples, ranging from simple problems such as radioactive decay, harmonic oscillators, and chemical reaction kinetics to advanced topics which include the simulation of neurons, chaotic systems such as a double-pendulum simulation and many more. In addition to these examples, it contains a chapter on special functions which can be used as "subroutines" in an analog computer setup.

571 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 22, 2023

Reviews

[Jonathan Jeckell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Analog computing seems like it has a lot of useful applications and advantages, especially when combined with digital computing in a hybrid computer. It looks like there's a lot of overlap with things you might want to do with a system dynamic simulation. I'm going to have to think for a while about how extensively they overlap and what is still unique in a system dynamic simulation. But even where they overlap I think I'd prefer to run a system dynamic model to figure things out because it's a lot more flexible than physically wiring a system. If I had to build something that ran the same setup on ongoing basis the analog computer looks like a winner.

and the book explicitly showed how this is advantageous for solving complex differential equations and even helping train artificial intelligence. I could also see this as being very useful for working with radios, RADAR, electronic warfare, SIGINT, etc, where you send or receive information in an analog format.

Besides the energy advantages where an analog computer can solve the same problems as a digital computer, the book also mentions inherent security because the code is embodied in the hardware.

Certainly gave me a lot to think about.