Modern Analog Field Computing

Last modifications on Wed, Nov 22, 1995.
Hard Hats Required.

Table of Contents

AI Focus | Applications Focus | Theory Focus | VLSI Focus

Publications | Tools | VLSI Circuit Library

Overview

This is a virtual book. It collects the publications of many people, including my own, and organizes the material to

define field computing and its theoretical foundations,
explain how field computers (also known as extended analog computers) are designed and implemented as VLSI circuits,
discuss some of the applications of field computers, and
present resources that you can use to build your own VLSI field computers, including several built-and-tested MOSIS "TinyChip" prototypes.

As a virtual book, Modern Analog Field Computing (or MAFC) was intended to be completely on-line and hypertext-linked. Unfortunately, this is not possible. Much of the material about field computing was published in the 1950's, when Vannevar Bush had recently described his knowledge multiplier and Xanadu was not even a gleam in Ted Nelson's eye.

Until, if ever, the older material is put on-line, MAFC must remain incomplete. Some chapters of MAFC will refer you to complete chapters or sections of books that are out of print, or to papers that are found in journals that are not on-line. I present only what I believe to be the most significant material. There is much I have not included that you might find helpful; the bibliography is an attempt to list what has been omitted from MAFC.

I have summarized the importance of the books and papers included in MAFC, and described their major results. You should at least read this material to understand the paradigm, and the breadth and depth of the problems that field computing solves - problems that are nowadays considered to be amenable only to scientific computing on high-performance workstations or parallel architectures.

As you will find in the chapters on applications and hybrid field computers, there are niches where small prototype field computers are already being applied to solve certain classes of problems. It is my belief that as the limitations of digital architectures are reached (and to believe that they have none is foolish), the field computing paradigm will become increasingly important.

Shortly before his death, Lee Rubel told me:

"The future of analog computing is unlimited. As a visionary, I see it eventually displacing digital computing, especially, in the beginning, in partial differential equations and as a model in neurobiology. It will take some decades for this to be done. In the meantime, it is a very rich and challenging field of investigation, although (or maybe because) it is not in the current fashion.
Sincerely yours, LEE A. RUBEL"

It will not take decades, as the early successful applications demonstrate. I hope that MAFC will persuade you to examine field computing in more detail, a paradigm that complements digital computing and unifies digital and analog computer architectures in a very satisfying way.

Jonathan W. Mills Home Page

Please send comments to jwmills@cs.indiana.edu