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The Unbelievable Zombie Comeback of Analog Computing
A long-form WIRED feature article (May 2023) by Charles Platt examining whether analog computing is experiencing a genuine renaissance. The article surveys historic analog devices, interviews researchers at Mythic, IBM, Columbia University (Yannis Tsividis, Glenn Cowan, Ning Guo), and MIT (Sara Achour), and traces the development of chip-scale hybrid analog-digital computers such as the HCDC. It concludes that energy efficiency demands from AI workloads—where the human brain operates on approximately 20 W versus megawatts for digital equivalents—are the primary driver for renewed interest, and that differential-equation fluency will be a key skill for any analog computing revival.
analog computing revivalhybrid analog-digital chipsdifferential equationsAI hardware efficiency