I agree that if we have neat tech in Roswell, now might be a time to reverse engineer it. I want a portable fusion reactor and a warp drive, please.

I think in all seriousness, analog is interesting. I am most definitely not up on my differential equations — that was a long, long time ago — and this method reminds me of how I was taught physics. When my cranky British professor threw the chalk at you, you were going to be the one up in front of the class solving problems for the day. He just stood by and nudged you here or there. But before you started doing the math, he would make you walk through an estimate of how to solve the problem and what you thought an approximate answer might look like. And armed with that estimate, you checked to see if you math was converging into that direction. At first, we all had panic attacks, and then, it got to be fun. And today, I look at every problem this way, Aslan. And of course I was taking you seriously, but with the kind of wry humor that is encouraging, not at all dismissive or mocking. I don’t roll that way.

Analog computing may be the way forward for AI and interference.

I honestly can’t tell whether you were taking me seriously or not regarding my previous comment Timothy Pickett Morgan.

Here’s a 10×10 mm analog chip in silicon, doing programmable computation with retransmission gates. (Yes, I know Wired, but this is real) https://www.wired.com/story/unbelievable-zombie-comeback-analog-computing/amp

“A key innovation of Cowan’s was making the chip reconfigurable—or programmable. Old-school analog computers had used clunky patch cords on plug boards. Cowan did the same thing in miniature, between areas on the chip itself, using a preexisting technology known as transmission gates. These can work as solid-state switches to connect the output from processing block A to the input of block B, or block C, or any other block you choose.”

“His second innovation was to make his analog chip compatible with an off-the-shelf digital computer, which could help to circumvent limits on precision. “You could get an approximate analog solution as a starting point,” Cowan explained, “and feed that into the digital computer as a guess, because iterative routines converge faster from a good guess.” The end result of his great labor was etched onto a silicon wafer measuring a very respectable 10 millimeters by 10 millimeters. “Remarkably,” he told me, “it did work.””

Analog is waiting in the wings looking for believers and funding, for when digital hits the wall.

Are you up on your differential equations? There’s boards available to people who could make use of them, that would make for a very interesting review.

This is a group effort, and I appreciate you.

Ooops! You are correct — I mis-interpreted and then mis-calculated too. Re-thinking about it suggests Intel 7 (10nm) being 1.25 times more efficient that 14nm (comparing the 8-core Cascade Lake, Ice Lake, and Sapphire Rapids). So things are o.k. efficiency-wise (continued improvements!).

I get the idea of normalizing to four cores, but you can’t actually have just four cores. Or, if you turn four off, you double the effective cost of the remaining cores. I am with you about Intel 4, but Intel is not using that on Xeon SPs. They are moving straight to Intel 3 with Granite Rapids. Emerald Rapids should be Intel 4 and is just another refined Intel 7. Intel will try to close the gap some with Granite Rapids and Turin, I guess.