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，模拟电路和系统最近对于主流计算变得更加重要。摩尔定律在计算领域的可预见终结就是这样一个原因，其中数字电路中过多的物理功耗所施加的限制发挥了重要作用。另一方面，模拟电路被吹捧为本质上低功耗，因此有可能至少部分缓解该问题。该奖项资助了一个研讨会，该研讨会将通过将领先的学者和理论家以及行业从业者聚集在一起为期两天的时间来探索模拟计算的最新技术水平。该领域的领导者将进行演讲，并将举行头脑风暴会议，以规划该领域未来的研究方向。讨论将以报告的形式记录下来，这不仅将成为科学家和工程师未来工作的基础，还将以公共网站和 NSF 项目报告的形式传播。选定的学生将被邀请参加研讨会，适当关注与会者群体的多样性，包括女性和其他代表性不足的群体。技术进步实现更大规模的集成也使模拟电路和系统更加可行。虽然模拟电路固有的噪声和随之而来的不确定性仍然困扰着它们，但新的架构和问题领域显示出可以最大限度地减少噪声有害影响的希望。对模拟神经网络（例如使用深度学习）的新兴趣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，模拟计算的终极能力也在研究中。虽然图灵机一直是数字计算机的理想化计算模型，并且（数字）计算机的最终理论能力已在此框架中进行了评估，但类似的模拟计算研究在文献中才刚刚起步。例如，由于对模拟计算重新产生了兴趣，理论研究人员正在重新审视将计算问题的模拟复杂性分类为 P、NP 等类的结果。这种松散联系的研究与实践的影响——特别是在解决实际问题的硬件设计方面——仍有待观察，并将成为研讨会的核心。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并被认为值得通过以下方式获得支持：使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估。