- What if the next big technology
was actually a really old technology?
The processors in your computer or phone are digital.
They think in ones and zeros.
But this processor thinks in waves.
This is an analog processor,
and it might allow us to totally rethink computing
from the ground up.
Oh wow, it can cut through anything.
- For the last few decades,
digital computing has always been driven by software.
And it became very easy to use and very easy
to build applications.
But all of the information in the world is natively analog.
And so what analog processing allows us to do
is understand and potentially inference and gather insights
from that data in its rawest form.
- But just like the digital processors you know,
it can still be programmed with software,
and that's kind of a big deal.
- Imagine being able to build new devices
that use AI and machine learning algorithms,
but yet, use 1/1000 of the energy that they use
from a digital perspective.
And so you get all those benefits of analog-
the power, the efficiency, the accuracy-
but now you can use a software to program it very quickly.
- Does all processing need to be digital?
How will analog processors change the way our computers work
and interact with us?
This is "Hard Reset,"
a series about rebuilding our world from scratch.
Hey, everyone.
Real quick, we're trying something new at "Hard Reset."
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Now, I wanna make sure you know "Hard Reset"
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Okay, back to nerding out about analog computers.
The first computers ever made were analog.
Think Ancient Greece. Later on, we had slide rules,
and in the 19th century, we developed analog computers
that calculated how things like the tides would change
over time or solve differential equations.
We met the folks from Aspinity to learn
about analog processors.
- Analog has not gone away.
I mean, every iPhone uses analog to collect data
and analog to transmit data in the form of RF.
So analog has always been there,
but it's bene relegated to those primary capabilities.
- Analog processors were surpassed
by digital processors,
mainly because digital could be manufactured more easily
and they could be programmed with software.
This made them far more flexible and adaptable.
But what about a software-programmable analog processor?
Well, that's what this is.
- The challenge with analog has always been
when you put a certain input in,
for the same circuit in a different silicon,
you might get a slightly different output.
And we call that 'voltage offset.'
So 2.1 and 1.9 aren't exactly the same.
You want it to be two.
And Aspinity has solved a major hurdle,
and through our software,
we're able to make fine-tune adjustments
so that that chip gets a 2 at the output,
this chip gets a 2 at the output.
But we also solved a key problem with regards to use model
and how easy it is to use.
And so we're now able to program an analog processor
from Aspinity in the same way that we do digital.
- That means the signals from all the sensors
that these chips are connected to don't need
to be converted into ones and zeros-
they can just go straight in.
And you can write the software that directs the chip
about how to interpret those signals.
That's sorta huge.
But don't take my word for it.
Jared here has a little more insight
as a product designer at argodesign here in Austin, Texas.
- Aspinity has slayed a dragon here,
and I've been going along blissfully thinking
like the history of computing is set and settled.
We will do digital.
We will go binary.
Turns out that all along,
analog has been slowly creeping along.
Now that we've solved the stability
and programmability issues of analog computing,
we're gonna see a quick reset
to the entire architecture of computing.
- Right now, we spend tons of energy
breaking analog signals into digital signals,
just so that our computers can understand them.
And by tons of energy, we're not being hyperbolic.
Think about all the sensors in your phone,
your house, your car, at work.
Most of them collect analog signals
that have to be converted into digital signals
and usually back into analog signals
so that we can hear them or see them.
- We expect 30 billion devices like this by the end
of the decade.
Every one of these will be computing on data,
and it takes tremendous amounts of energy
to have these always on computing.
- All that energy
we spend converting signals adds up.
In fact, the energy consumption of digital computers
is rising faster than the rate at which we create energy-
that's a problem.
- It allows these products to be more power-intelligent.
So we can really understand right at the sensor input
whether the data is relevant or not.
And then that drives everything after that
to take advantage of that efficiency.
- This technology isn't meant
to replace digital computers,
but it could mean we use them much more strategically.
- We can still have a combination of analog
and digital locally,
but we wanna be able to use that analog
as your always-on computing and then wake up the digital
as necessary or wake up and send data
to the cloud as necessary.
- Think of it this way:
How often do you change the batteries
in your smart TV's remote control?
Well, even those batteries are slowly being nibbled away at
by the digital processors that sit and listen
for your voice to command them.
- And all this is just so you can say, you know,
"Hey TV, I wanna watch a rom-com with Matthew McConaughey.
- You really can't make it five minutes
into a conversation in Austin
without someone bringing up Matthew McConaughey.
- 'All right, all right, all right.
- Oh Christ.
- How you doin'?'
- Anyway-
- With analog computing, it can be listening continuously
for that wake word that's using almost no electricity,
never doing analog-digital conversion,
and then it can wake up a more expensive system
to do the work of the request.
- That means that same remote control
could last 10 or even 100 times longer on the same batteries
or you could just use much smaller batteries
and get the same functionality.
- And you can virtually do any audio, right?
This is a glass break detector.
This also is for automotive glass break as well.
- Right.
So you can potentially build the kind of filters
and decision tree that can say,
"That was glass breaking.
That's a window.
This is a car window, tempered glass breaking."
And then based on whether or not it hits one
of those priority glass breaks,
it can send that signal to the digital chip,
which communicates via either Wi-Fi or cell signal,
I'm guessing? - Exactly.
Once we make the decision, we go ahead and send the trigger-
- Right. - Out to whomever,
a call center in some cases, directly to the authorities.
- Hey, Siri,
the glass is broken.
You can't fool it.
- You wanna hold it? - Yeah.
I'll see what happens.
All right.
What if I'm talking over it while you do it?
Now does it filter out?
So here I'm gonna talk.
I'm gonna say,
this is "Hard Reset,"
a series about, wow, that really.
- Yeah. - I'm kinda surprised
that it could differentiate between the two,
'cause a lotta people say my voice sounds
like breaking glass.
- It may not be a major item that gets solved,
but all these little things
where you're using energy inefficiently add up.
- Where this really starts to impact society at scale
isn't your remote control.
It's your pipes, your solar power plants, your cars.
- On a piece of equipment like a stacker,
which is one of those conveyor belts that runs dirt up
and makes piles and there's something on the order
of a half a million of 'em in operation every day,
and just, if you have a chip set that can run for years
on battery power with enough machine-learning intelligence
to listen to a vibration and determine
that it's not just a vibration,
but the type that indicates a bearing is going out,
and then you could use that information
to find out what it would cost to repair a bearing.
When you think about the whole system,
it's not just that the chip set uses less power,
it's that because it uses less power,
it creates a new computing architecture
where we can get more value, the insights,
with less resources.
- Monitoring all these things with digital systems
would be impractical.
But with analog systems, it starts to seem achievable.
So, picture a scenario where analog computers orchestrate
the activity of digital computers.
This would mean better sensing systems and more of them
in places where it can make a difference.
And of course, all the sensing of the real world
can be done with far less energy than the digital systems
we currently use.
You probably won't ever have an all analog computer.
Some things, like audio devices, might become mostly analog.
That would probably be music to the ears
of your vinyl-loving friend.
But most implementations would be about blending
the best strengths of analog and digital.
For example, heart monitoring is perfect
for analog computers.
Our heartbeat is an analog signal.
And with power-efficient, tiny sensors,
more people could be monitored effectively.
If the analog portion ever detects an anomaly,
it can wake up the digital component
that communicates with the cloud
or contacts a health care provider.
- Once you have these kinda chip sets,
you're gonna see an explosion of people looking
to create new kinds of analog sensors.
This would allow me to create an entire architecture
around voice computing in the home,
because I could look at the faucet and say, "Turn on,"
and the stove wouldn't turn on
because I wasn't looking at it.
- It's this idea of, it'll be a very low-energy deployment
of all of these insight-gathering devices
that are very specific to you.
And there's no middleman going to the cloud necessarily
or no middleman that's monitoring it for you-
it can come to you.
- We're constantly relying on more
and more intelligent devices in our lives.
But analog intelligence might totally change the way
those devices understand us.