Microsoft has an analog optical computer that doesn't use transistors to process data

[Alfonso Maruccia]

Forward-looking: Microsoft is working on a novel, future-proof computer design that could sidestep Moore's law. The system, known as Analog Iterative Machine (AIM), is an analog optical machine that uses photons and electrons to directly solve complex mathematical problems with no need for transistors and data crunching operations in binary format.

Microsoft's AIM isn't exactly a computer, at least in the traditional sense, as it doesn't use bits or bytes to process data and make calculations. But it's already shown potential for surpassing state-of-the art digital (silicon-based) technology or even the most powerful quantum computers being designed right now.

The AIM machine is built using commodity opto-electronic technologies that are low-cost and scalable, Microsoft says, and is based on an "asynchronous data flow architecture" which doesn't require data exchange between storage units and "compute locations."

AIM isn't designed for general purpose computing tasks, though. The analog optical computer is useful to solve difficult "optimization problems" like the well-known travelling salesman riddle, Microsoft says, which are at the heart of many, math-intensive industries including finance, logistics, transportation, energy, healthcare, and manufacturing. When it comes to crunching all the possible combinations of an exponentially growing problem, traditional, digital computers struggle to provide a solution in a "timely, energy-efficient and cost-effective manner."

AIM was conceived to address two simultaneous trends, Microsoft explains, which are sidestepping the unraveling of Moore's Law and overcoming the limitations of specialized machines designed for solving optimization problems. Unconventional hardware-based approaches have a limited range of practical applications, Redmond states, while the cutting-edge algorithmic advancements used by AIM can tackle a larger range of optimization problems.

AIM works at the speed of light, and it seemingly provides a 100x increase in performance compared to the most advanced digital approaches available today. For now, AIM is still a research project with limited access for potential customers. The machine, however, is already being tested by UK financial company Barclays, which is using it to track transactions of money into stock purchases. A cloud-based service that simulates the AIM algorithm on a "performance GPU" will also be available soon.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/99228-microsoft-has-analog-optical-computer-doesnt-use-transistors.html

 

[stewi0001]

The irony for me is that I was just talking to someone today about alternatives for silicon based computers.

 

[dangh]

"AIM works at the speed of light"
The irony is that electricity propagates at the speed of light as well, so the only thing they modified is removing gates/transistors frequency in a logic machine... and that was called 'oscilloscope' and logic analyzer in the old days ;D

 

[wiyosaya]

Its a big jump from that setup on a bench in a lab to a device a consumer can buy and use.

 

[neeyik]

The irony is that electricity propagates at the speed of light as well

It's close to c (as in, with the same order of speed) but it does depend on the material's conductivity and permeability -- for circuitry, it's obviously pretty high but just not 100% c.

 

[hwertz]

Interesting. I saw a Systron Donner once, it was a big rack with dials and knobs, in fact an analog computer (googling it now, it looks like each rack unit may have been considered an individual computer, so the full rack may have been using several individual computers daisy-changed together to solve larger problems?). These apparently were used up until the 1950s-1960s.

Just as described in the article but big and chunky, you had (for instance) a knob you could turn from 1-10, I don't know if these controlled voltage or current, let's say voltage... so 1-10 might put out 1-10 volts, multiplying or dividing would just use an analog circuit to increase or decrease the voltage, an "adder" would just take like a 5 volt and 2 volt input and output 7 volts, if you wanted to branch based on a value being above some value you had relays that could click on or off based on voltage thresholds, etc. You would "program" it by just shoving these wires with something like the larger-sized headphone plug into plugs on the plugboard which would connect the circuits together in the needed combination.

 

[someOtherGuy]

It's close to c (as in, with the same order of speed) but it does depend on the material's conductivity and permeability -- for circuitry, it's obviously pretty high but just not 100% c.

c is the speed of light in the vacuum. Whatever "frictions" apply to "electricity" (as in "electromagnetic wave") in a circuit would have a counterpart with "light" (electromagnetic wave too, right?) and whatever medium it traverses (different than vacuum)