Workshop on Analog Computing Opportunities

模拟计算机会研讨会

• 批准号: 1944199
• 负责人: Jennifer Hasler
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: Georgia Tech Research Corporation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-04-01 至 2024-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1944199&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Workshop; Analog; Computing; Opportunities

Analog circuits and systems have become more important to mainstream computing recently due to a multitude of reasons. The foreseeable end of Moore's law in computing is one such reason where limits imposed by excessive physical power dissipation in digital circuits play an important role. Analog circuits on the other hand has been touted as intrinsically low power, thus having the potential to at least partially alleviate the problem. This award funds a workshop that will explore the current state of the art in analog computing by bringing together the leading academics and theoreticians, along with industry practitioners under one roof for a period of two days. Presentations will be made by leaders in the field, and brainstorming sessions will be held to chart the direction of future research in the field. The discussions will be documented in the form of a report, which will not only form the basis for future work among scientists and engineers but will also be disseminated in the form of public websites and NSF projects reports. Selected students will be invited to participate in the workshop by paying due attention to the diversity of the group of attendees to include women and other underrepresented groups.Progress in technology enabling larger scale integration has also made analog circuits and systems more viable. While noise and attendant uncertainties inherent to the analog circuits still plague them, newer architectures and problem domains show promise where the deleterious effects of noise could be minimized. Still newer interest in analog neural networks (using e.g., deep learning) attests to this emerging trend. Other technological innovations, e.g., radio frequency techniques, optical, quantum and other emerging technologies for device and/or interconnect can also exploit analog techniques. The ultimate power of analog computing, as compared to the digital circuits is also being investigated. While the Turing machine has been a idealized model of computation for digital computers and the ultimate theoretical power of a (digital) computing machine has been assessed in this framework, similar studies for analog computing have been in nascent in the literature. For example, results classifying the analog complexity of computational problems in classes analogous to say, P, NP etc. is an area being revisited by theoretical researchers due to renewed interest in analog computing. The impact of this loosely connected body of research to practice - especially in the design of hardware for solving practical problems - remains to be seen, and will be central to the workshop.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

由于多种原因，最近对于主流计算而言，模拟电路和系统变得越来越重要。摩尔定律在计算方面的可预见末端是由于数字电路中过度耗散施加的限制起着重要作用的原因之一。另一方面，模拟电路被吹捧为本质上的低功率，因此有可能至少部分缓解问题。该奖项为一个研讨会提供了一个研讨会，该研讨会将通过将领先的学者和理论家与一个在一个屋顶下的行业从业人员一起融合在一起，探索模拟计算中的现行状况，为期两天。该领域的领导者将进行演讲，并将举行集思广益的会议，以绘制该领域未来研究的方向。讨论将以报告的形式进行记录，该报告不仅将构成科学家和工程师将来工作的基础，而且还将以公共网站和NSF项目报告的形式传播。将邀请选定的学生参加研讨会，以适当关注与会者小组的多样性，包括妇女和其他代表性不足的小组。技术的发展使大规模集成也使模拟回路和系统更可行。尽管噪音和随之而来的不确定性仍然困扰着它们，但较新的架构和问题域显示了有希望的噪声的有害影响，可以最小化。对模拟神经网络（例如，深度学习）的兴趣仍然更新，证明了这一新兴趋势。其他技术创新，例如射频技术，光学，量子和其他用于设备和/或互连的新兴技术也可以利用模拟技术。与数字电路相比，模拟计算的最终功能也正在研究中。尽管图灵机已经是数字计算机的理想计算模型，并且在此框架中评估了（数字）计算机的最终理论能力，但在文献中，对模拟计算的类似研究也存在。例如，由于对模拟计算的重新兴趣而被理论研究人员重新审视的类似于类似的类别的计算问题的模拟复杂性的结果。这项松散连接的研究团体对实践的影响 - 尤其是在解决实践问题的硬件设计方面 - 仍有待观察，这将是研讨会的核心。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的审查标准来通过评估来获得支持的。