>Hahaha, SMH. I don’t need to prove anything,

Then why are you communicating with me? Isn't your goal to convince me? If not why are you wasting your time? My goal is to show you how wrong you are, so I'm not wasting my time. I think I'm failing in this regard because you're just unable to admit it.

>I was making a statement about doing operations like multiply on fp32 digital values from the start, responding directly to your statements 8 comments up. You’re losing your own topics, and you seem to be unable to actually hear or understand what I’m saying for some reason, because you keep repeating your own separate straw man over and over and over.

I'm not responding to that statement. I'm responding to your comment on repeatability. You REFRENCED me directly in that statement so I am responding to it. Look at the chain:

YOU: Digital fp8 might be repeatable where analog isn’t, but that doesn’t necessarily make it more accurate, nor is it something we characterize as “exact” like @corethree was claiming.

ME: Anyway, repeatable and exact are sort of similar concepts. If I can repeat a number that means I can replicate it, exactly. Hence the term exact.

ME: I also never said digital fp8 is more accurate or exact. There's no such thing as "digital fp8" or "analog fp8" it makes no sense. Digital and analog are orthogonal concepts to floating point. I said electrical analog devices cannot precisely represent a ONE. Simply because you cannot remove all the noise from an analog signal to make it a perfect ONE. To help you understand, instead of floating point, think of an INT8. An an analog computer cannot represent the exact instance of an INT8 in the same way a digital one can.

YOU: Oh my, no. Exact number is a term that makes a statement about precision and error, and repeatable is not. They are orthogonal terms.

ME: Oh my yes. The action of "repeating" 100 percent requires the ability to create an exact number. Why don't you try it repeating a 1v value in a circuit where exact numbers can't be made. Your claim simply isn't in line with reality.

YOU: I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. When you multiply two fp32 values, and the result is rounded, the answer is not exact, even if the inputs were.

ME: I'm not talking about two fp32 values. I'm not talking about multiplying. I'm talking about repeating a value. If a wire was once 2.1234 volts, I turn it off, can i replicate the 2.1234 volts again exactly? No. There's noise. Repeating is NOT multiplying.

Read this chain. It looks like there's two flaws with your logic here. First you don't understand what the word repeatability means. You seem to think it's only associated with multiplication of fp32 and you referenced me into making that claim in your INITIAL comment.

Second, if I can't apply repeatability to a single value, then it is NOT applicable to fp32 multiplication. Floating point is simply not commutative or associative. If the elements are added in the exact same order you CAN repeat the result. But if all these elements are noisy analog values then you can never repeat the results EVEN if the order is repeated.

Essentially the logic here still applies EVEN when you mistakenly think repeatability is some phenomenon only attributed to floating point.

So in conclusion two mistakes made exclusively by you. Failure to understand the meaning of "repeatability." And failure to understand the nature of repeatability in the context of floating point in that it's actually an algebraic issue where it lacks associativity and commutativity.

>I’ve listed multiple types of processors in active development and maybe a dozen companies making them, and you’re commenting on the article for one of them. If you think that nothing mentioned in this thread so far is “legit”, then it seems... nevermind. Pretty strong claims for someone who didn’t know that FPAAs exist...

First.. me not knowing about FPAAs is orthogonal to my point. I'm still right and you're still wrong. Comments like this lend zero support for your argument.

Basically let me illustrate to you what "legit" means. First the application can't be about better performance and energy efficiency. I caveated the FIRST sentence in this thread saying energy and speed were the only practical use cases, so you presenting such examples would be REDUNDANT to my point and useless to your counter.

That leaves but one application: Some practical usage that analog computing can do that digital can't. You've presented no example that fits this use case. So overall the conclusion here is that you're wrong.

I could be wrong. Perhaps you did present such an example and I missed it. If that is the case it would help convince me if you emphasized and elaborated on those specific examples. But you should only do this if your goal is to convince me that you're not wrong. If that's not your goal, then I suggest you just leave and not respond as you would be wasting your own time here if you're responding to me without the goal of convincing me. If that's the case, then you have wasted your time on this entire conversation.