- 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." This is a quick message about our sponsor for this episode, BetterHelp. Now, I wanna make sure
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the company we're profiling in this episode. But sponsorships from other
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as we develop stories is: What are the assumptions
about the way the world works that we should rethink? And personally, I think we need to rethink our cultural
taboos around mental health. Your mental health is super important- and it's something worth taking care of. I'm someone who has
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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.
