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Definitly exciting for RF to me. Be it 5g, wifi, etc. Hopefully we can get hispeed proccessing for cheaper. Right now the cheapest rf proccessing 5g module ive seen promise in is the bladerf fpga.
— with a little help from AI.
I call nullshit.
Relating this to carbon emissions is absurd. Your phone’s maximum power consumption is about 25W, of which sensors are a tiny, minuscule fraction. Running your phone at 25W for an entire year would allow you to drive a typical petrol car doing 40mpg for 250 miles on the same energy budget.
Reducing sensor power usage is good, but not for this reason.
I’m wondering what combination of features would use 25w on a phone. On flagship models the battery would last less than an hour at that consumption (and might even melt :P).
Your point still stands by the way, sensors take next to nothing in terms of power. I guess the point of the article is perhaps the processing of the signals is more efficient with this hybrid chip? Again though in real terms it’s a nothing-burger in terms of power consumption.
There is a connection, but I don’t think it’s a satisfying one.
There’s some thought that neural networks would take less power consumption if they were on analog chips. So yeah, it’s for LLMs to get bigger. Reducing CO2 emissions by not doing LLM slop is apparently off the table.
Reducing CO2 emissions by not doing LLM slop is apparently off the table.
Not to be argumentative, but has this ever been something the consumer market has done with an emerging “core” technology? I don’t see how this was ever realistically on the table.
AI slop is an unfortunate fact of life at this point. If it’s inevitable, we may as well make it as not terrible as possible.
Nothing inevitable about it. People aren’t going to be running local models en masse; that will be about as popular as self-hosting Internet services. People are largely reliant on centralized datacenter models, and those will shut down as the bubble pops.
That’s what regulations are for. We’ve been asking for CO2 regulations for decades, but the argument is almost always “we can’t reduce dirty energy production until we have enough power to replace it all without downscaling.” Then they invent stuff like crypto to drain any excess power. That crashed, then AI suddenly appears to drain it. I’m convinced it’s all a conspiracy to keep dirty energy companies profitable. The timing is just too convenient.
So…
This is not analog computing by no means
It’s both kinds of digital
/joke
How about
?yep, this is it
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This has nothing to do with retro technology. This is about thinking “is using binary really the most efficient way to run every computation we need to do?”, which is really relevant today.
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With “binary” I mean “has two states”, as in discrete, as in digital. You can represent binary bits using analog circuits, but it doesn’t make those circuits binary/digital. Likewise, you can represent continuous, analog functions using discrete logic, but it will always be an approximation. What makes these chips different is that they are able to not only represent but actually model continuous functions and values, like physical models.
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No offense taken! I just believe that a subtle difference does not mean unimportant and wanted to be precise. I didn’t take you as someone who doesn’t understand analog and digital, especially considering your instance :) I edited my previous comment for some additional clarity. I just think they’re neat ^^
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That doesn’t contradict anything above.
There’s a company pushing their hybrid analog/digital chip for real use cases. I dunno if it’s going to be successful, but it’s not retro.
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New, programmable analog chips that perform basic sound processing aren’t retro. The article is worth reading.
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Or, if you can’t read, Veritasium did a video: https://youtu.be/GVsUOuSjvcg
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I think it means that retrolemmy is either an expert in what is retro or that they are very protective of their retro territory.
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