uh no. This isn't strictly a rule that's true. It depends on the device whether it's an analog device or a digital device. Not all devices are digital. A DC motor is an analog component, a light bulb, a CRT oscilloscope display, an analog meter or gauge, an H-bridge. All these devices can live on the output side of an analog computer, or even a digital one with the right ADCs or DACs. You're wrong here.
>Digital fp8 might be repeatable where analog isn’t, but that doesn’t necessarily make it more accurate, nor is it something we characterize as “exact” like @corethree was claiming.
Why are you replying to my statements in a comment to another person? Makes no sense. Anyway, repeatable and exact are sort of similar concepts. If I can repeat a number that means I can replicate it, exactly. Hence the term exact.
I also never said digital fp8 is more accurate or exact. There's no such thing as "digital fp8" or "analog fp8" it makes no sense. Digital and analog are orthogonal concepts to floating point. I said electrical analog devices cannot precisely represent a ONE. Simply because you cannot remove all the noise from an analog signal to make it a perfect ONE. To help you understand, instead of floating point, think of an INT8. An an analog computer cannot represent the exact instance of an INT8 in the same way a digital one can.
>@corethree said there’s no practical use because analog can be simulated with digital. I’m sure as an audiophile, you’re aware that claim isn’t true.
This is probably the only area where you might be sort of right. Sounds like banging on a drum or the sound of plucking a string have origins from analog components. Even though these sounds can be replicated digitally the creation of unique sounds via analog synthesis is better suited to be done by an actual person banging on the actual thing and making the sound he wants. But I wouldn't call this analog computing.
> It’s true that analog can be simulated with digital but that has no bearing on whether analog components are useful.
Analog components are useful. Analog is what powers everyones home. Analog computing is the thing where analog has virtually no practical usage. Almost 100% of signal processing is now DSP. I'm sure there are really really niche areas where analog is still used, but in general it's not practical. I never said analog components are not useful.
Let me just add to this. Your comment wasn't just about the usefulness of analog computing. It was about a "reinvention" of a digital computer that used a base-10 numeral system and parallel data lines with one line for each digit. You misinterpreted that "invention" as a "analog computer." Your responses are more about you not understanding things then it is about analog computers and their practical usefulness.
>Another one is quantum computers, they’re quite analog, and definitely different from ‘digital’.
No. Quantum computers are not analog. They have qbits, so an aspect of it is discretized into symbols. They aren't digital either.
>One of the analog computing applications I had in mind when I replied was the new Photonic chips. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06558-8
This is Literally the area where I said analog could be better. Speed and energy. Read the paper that's where the improvements are. They reimplemented a Feed forward neural network (something usually done in digital computers) in an analog photonic chip and the main improvements were: Speed and energy. Literally.