Probabilistic logic makes microchip more energy efficient
By Darren Murph 
posted Feb 9th 2009 6:09AM
posted Feb 9th 2009 6:09AM
We'll be straight up with you -- there's a lot of fancy work going on with this one that laypeople will have a tough time grasping, but the long and short of it is this: a team from Rice University (Krishna Palem pictured) and Nanyang Technological University have created a microchip that "uses 30 times less electricity while running seven times faster than today's best technology." Already crying snake oil? Not so fast. By trashing the traditional set of mathematical rules (that'd be Boolean logic) and instead applying probabilistic logic, researchers have figured out how to deliver similar results with a fraction of the energy. The tech is being dubbed PCMOS (probabilistic CMOS), and could eventually end up in embedded systems and even cellphones. In the case of the latter, this type of chip will be able to display streaming video on a minuscule display with more artifacts than usual, but due to the small screen size and the human brain's ability to piece together nearly-perfect images, the errors involved would be all but forgotten. Meanwhile, your battery bar would still be nearly full. We always heard there was beauty in imperfections -- now, at long last, we finally get it.
I think this is another one of those discoveries where we "hear" about it, but wont see soon at all. For all we know companies will "use" this technology and stretch it real long for the $$
OT: New ads
Hey Engadget - those new ads are annoying but I was still able to manually block all of them with Adblock Plus and Element Hiding Helper.
Cheers to the article
So... digital has gone analog! neat.
2 + 2 ~ 4
Sound BS.
cmp/beq/bne will not go away in any near future.
It's not about negating traditional computing paradigm. It's about making some computations less precise for sake of performance.
Think of AMD's "3DNow!". 14(?) bit float numbers were well accepted by industry, yet technology silently died off.
"""We always heard there was beauty in imperfections -- now, at long last, we finally get it."""
Well, JPEGs are lossy, yet I see very few people complaining about pictures on Engadget ;)
Though, with battery and technology advances, I can hardly think of fitting applications. Mobile phones already have tiny screens and artifacts, though less visible, contribute to greater loss of details making the smaller screen feel even smaller. I personally have no problems charging (if needed) my gadgets once per day.
Probabilistic logic trades off accuracy for speed. Its the kind of thing that should be handled at the application level however. By having smarter software you can force lower use of the system resources and use much less power. But thats hard to sell to an investment company.
On the performance aspect I completely agree, but I don't think you can use "much less" power through probabilistic software. So for portable devices I think these do have great potential.
A.C.E.R.
Noise in video recorders, noise in pictures, noise in music playback... that all is acceptable loss due to increased battery life, right?
Wrong, if you ask me. I don't want a week of crappish video, I want one hour of perfect pictures.
@Shinigami
I suppose you only watch completely decompressed source material from the studios? Because any video codec that gives a decent file size is lossy compression. This technology sounds like it is much better that the comments here suggest. To process a digital media video, the calculations must be performed with a fairly high degree of accuracy in order to display anything at all. So any noise or artifacts would logically be minimal. And don't forget that probability theory is a lot more predictable than it sounds, when you have a sufficient number of events (eg. unreliable transistors) the results become very predictable
Probabilistic logic? So it'll randomly decide whether to display an image correctly or not?
I'll pass, there's enough randomness and uncertainty with computers as it is.
You won't notice the difference!! You don't see any difference between 6 and 8, do you? No, you don't! Because they said you don't!
The year 2020.
Nuclear power plant employee: Computer, please calculate how much uranium we can safely use in the reactor.
Computer: About 20 kilograms. Probably.
Nuclear power plant: BOOM!
uranium based nuclear power plants in 2020? lulz
nuclear power plant employees operating said power plants? lulz
THIS IS MADDNESS! THIS IS MATHEMATICS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THIS IS SPARTA!!!!
Sorry, couldn't stand it.
i will believe it when i see it in action (commercial use)
This is probably a good idea.
ah...... m not getting anything !!
Basically not only our pictures will contain a lot of noise, but our videos, made on PCs and repacked for playback on small devices will, too, contain noise, produced by "PCMOS" CPU. Nice!
But you won't notice the difference anyways! Or so they think...
to me this sounds like a revolution in computing, much more natural like our brains...
I'm really curious to see how this develops. For PMDs it might be perfect.
Glad to know an infinite probability drive is not too far away
i believe it's actually the infinite impossibility drive.... but yes.... I am excited at the prospect, that it seems as though it might possibly exist in the infinite one day.
Actually you're both wrong, its infinite improbability drive
It actually makes some amount of sense. If you are reading a book and there is a typo, it is clearly wrong, and yet you still read the word and the majority of the time you skip over it without ever noticing a difference. Your brain simply puts what it knows should be there in place. In this case, they are essentially extending the typo analogy to video. If it can save energy and if the level of artifacts does not diminish overall enjoyment, I think they have a winner.
On a separate note, glad to see so many things coming out of my native H-Town (and beloved Rice)
I'm shocked and appalled at strong opinions being voiced by people with CLEARLY very little technical knowledge.... or even a small grasp of what this really means and how it will work.
Read a book. Read a book. Read a Mutha Truckin' Book!!
On the plus side, you'll never watch the SAME video twice!
so i'm a tool... it's the infinite improbability drive... not impossibility..... could it be possible? yes, but not probably.... see what uncertainty leads to... garbage....
Can you say .... "skynet" - I can. :-P
Brilliant, Annoying and enraging. I absolutely love the idea and hate that it wasn't mine. There are very cool profs that NFA are fare shorter then there traditional counterpart the DFA. Because of the fact that this does not neccessarily aply to algorithmic performance at all its a really cool idea. And to say this clear: They will keep errors as low as possible. There are 10 years of network video streaming they will look at and simply use their propability equotations.
Yes, jSn, Skynet is not far away. Heck, "probabilistic" logic circuits? It's just a short step from there to probaBALLISTIC logic, and you know a computer using that is going to take over the world before it's halfway switched on.
Still, I believe this technology should be pursued. It's a whole new world compared to the rigid yes/no mechanics that has ruled the fundamentals of computing since its conception - forgive my uneducated optimism - and I'm already picturing how a generation 2 probability computer can be made to emulate a human prodigy, intuiting the solution to a problem without consciously going through the steps to solve it.
Imperfection is indeed the key to the future of computers. A computer that can make a rough estimation can probably learn to make a metaphor, and understanding metaphors is what gives rise to consciousness.
You mean like ballistic electron semiconductors? :P
We got this far and no comments on the guy's looks?
You just know he's building it so he can watch midget porn for less energy.
See MIT Tech Review for more:
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections&sc=emerging08&id=20246