Reconfigurable Analog Computers

TL;DR

This paper reviews the evolution of reconfigurable analog computers, highlighting their potential as energy-efficient co-processors and discussing approaches for automatic reconfiguration to overcome traditional programming challenges.

Contribution

It provides an overview of classic and modern autopatch systems for analog computers, emphasizing their importance for future energy-efficient computing.

Findings

Analog computers face programming complexity and error-proneness.

Automatic reconfiguration methods are essential for practical analog computing.

Reconfigurable analog systems are gaining renewed interest as co-processors.

Abstract

The Achilles heel of classic analog computers was the complex, error prone, and time consuming process of programming. This typically involved manually patching hundreds or even thousands of connections between individual computing elements as well as setting many precision 10-turn potentiometers manually, often taking hours, or even days. Albeit being simplified by means of removable patch panels, switching from one program to another still was time consuming and thus expensive. With digital computers about to hit physical boundaries with respect to energy consumption, clock frequency, and integration density, analog computers have gained a lot of interest as co-processors for certain application areas in recent years. This requires some means for automatic reconfiguration of these systems under control of an attached digital computer. The following sections give an overview of classic and modern approaches towards such autopatch systems.