Komputer analog

Electronic analog computers

The similarity between linear mechanical components, such as springs and dashpots (viscous-fluid dampers), and electrical components, such as capacitors, inductors, and resistors is striking in terms of mathematics. They can be modeled using equations that are of essentially the same form.
However, the difference between these systems is what makes analog computing useful. If one considers a simple mass-spring system, constructing the physical system would require making or modifying the springs and masses. This would be followed by attaching them to each other and an appropriate anchor, collecting test equipment with the appropriate input range, and finally, taking measurements. In more complicated cases, such as suspensions for racing cars, experimental construction, modification, and testing is not so simple nor inexpensive.
The electrical equivalent can be constructed with a few operational amplifiers (Op amps) and some passive linear components; all measurements can be taken directly with an oscilloscope. In the circuit, the (simulated) 'stiffness of the spring', for instance, can be changed by adjusting a potentiometer. The electrical system is an analogy to the physical system, hence the name, but it is less expensive to construct, generally safer, and typically much easier to modify.
As well, an electronic circuit can typically operate at higher frequencies than the system being simulated. This allows the simulation to run faster than real time (which could, in some instances, be hours, weeks, or longer). Experienced users of electronic analog computers said that they offered a comparatively intimate control and understanding of the problem, relative to digital simulations.
The drawback of the mechanical-electrical analogy is that electronics are limited by the range over which the variables may vary. This is called dynamic range. They are also limited by noise levels. Floating-point digital calculations have comparatively-huge dynamic range (Good modern handheld scientific/engineering calculators have exponents of 500.)
These electric circuits can also easily perform a wide variety of simulations. For example, voltage can simulate water pressure and electric current can simulate rate of flow in terms of cubic metres per second. (In fact, given the proper scale factors, all that is required would be a stable resistor, in that case.) Given flow rate and accumulated volume of liquid, a simple integrator provides the latter; both variables are voltages. In practice, current was rarely used in electronic analog computers, because voltage is much easier to work with.
Analog computers are especially well-suited to representing situations described by differential equations. Occasionally, they were used when a differential equation proved very difficult to solve by traditional means.
An electronic digital system uses two voltage levels to represent binary numbers. In many cases, the binary numbers are simply codes that correspond, for instance, to brightness of primary colors, or letters of the alphabet (or other symbols). The manipulation of these binary numbers is how digital computers work. The electronic analog computer, however, manipulates electrical voltages that are proportional to the magnitudes of quantities in the problem being solved.
Accuracy of an analog computer is limited by its computing elements as well as quality of the internal power and electrical interconnections. The precision of the analog computer readout was limited chiefly by the precision of the readout equipment used, generally three or four significant figures. Precision of a digital computer is limited by the word size; arbitrary-precision arithmetic, while relatively slow, provides any practical degree of precision that might be needed.

Analog-digital hybrid computers

There is an intermediate device, a 'hybrid' computer, in which an analog output is converted into digits. The information then can be sent into a standard digital computer for further computation. Because of their ease of use and because of technological breakthroughs in digital computers in the early 70s, the analog-digital hybrids were replacing the analog-only systems.
Hybrid computers are used to obtain a very accurate but not very mathematically precise 'seed' value, using an analog computer front-end, which value is then fed into a digital computer, using an iterative process to achieve the final desired degree of precision. With a three or four digit precision, highly-accurate numerical seed, the total computation time necessary to reach the desired precision is dramatically reduced, since many fewer digital iterations are required (and the analog computer reaches its result almost instantaneously). Or, for example, the analog computer might be used to solve a non-analytic differential equation problem for use at some stage of an overall computation (where precision is not very important). In any case, the hybrid computer is usually substantially faster than a digital computer, but can supply a far more precise computation than an analog computer. It is useful for real-time applications requiring such a combination (e.g., a high frequency phased-array radar or a weather system computation).

Batasan

In general, analog computers are limited by non-ideal effects. An analog signal is composed of four basic components: DC and AC magnitudes, frequency, and phase. The real limits of range on these characteristics limit analog computers. Some of these limits include the operational amplifier offset, finite gain, and frequency response, noise floor, non-linearities, temperature coefficient, and parasitic effects within semiconductor devices. For commercially available electronic components, ranges of these aspects of input and output signals are always figures of merit.

Current research

Although digital computation is extremely popular, some research in analog computation is still being done. A few universities still use analog computers to teach control system theory. Comdyna manufactured small analog computers until roughly the end of the 20th century. At Indiana University Bloomington, Jonathan Mills has developed the Extended Analog Computer based on sampling voltages in a foam sheet. At the Harvard Robotics Laboratory, analog computation is a research topic.
Although digital computer simulation of electronic circuits is very successful and routinely used in design and development, there is one category of analog circuit that cannot be simulated digitally, and that is an (analog) circuit made to exhibit chaotic behavior. Because everything in the analog circuit is essentially simultaneous, but a digital simulation is sequential, simulation of a chaotic circuit fails.

Real computers

Computer theorists often refer to idealized analog computers as real computers (because they operate on the set of real numbers). Digital computers, by contrast, must first quantize the signal into a finite number of values, and so can only work with the rational number set (or, with an approximation of irrational numbers).
These idealized analog computers may in theory solve problems that are intractable on digital computers; however as mentioned, in reality, analog computers are far from attaining this ideal, largely because of noise minimization problems. In theory, ambient noise is limited by quantum noise (caused by the quantum movements of ions). Ambient noise may be severely reduced— but never to zero— by using cryogenically cooled parametric amplifiers. Moreover, given unlimited time and memory, the (ideal) digital computer may also solve real number problems.