From: Max More (maxmore@globalpac.com)
Date: Tue Sep 08 1998 - 12:28:54 MDT
PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
Number 389 September 4, 1998 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben
Stein
CHAOS-BASED COMPUTING, a fundamentally new way to
perform computations by exploiting the ubiquitous phenomenon of
chaos, has been demonstrated in a simulation by researchers in India
and the United States (Bill Ditto, Georgia Tech, 404-894-5216).
Compared to digital computation, the chaos-based technique might
come closer to how the brain performs computation, and might be
superior in certain tasks such as pattern recognition. The computer
consists of an interconnected grid of "chaotic elements," systems
such as ammonia lasers which can generate unpredictable signals
even though their behavior is governed by known mathematical
equations. To encode specific numbers into each element, the
researchers make specific signal patterns correspond to a number
and ask each element to open its connection to the rest of the grid
when it generates that pattern. Sending its signal out to the grid can
trigger activity in neighboring elements. To carry out specific
operations such as addition, the researchers connect the elements in
a certain way. An unpredictable but deterministic avalanche of
activity among the elements ultimately settles down to produce an
unvarying signal that corresponds to the desired answer. Having
demonstrated their technique in a computer simulation, the
researchers are planning to test this idea with chaotic ammonia
lasers and hybrid networks of nerve cells and silicon chips. (Sinha
and Ditto, Physical Review Letters, 7 September 1998.)
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