I read a paper about the idea of a computer based on surface wave propagation. The waves activated outputs when multiple waves reached the output point at the same time. Unfortunately, the PDF was on my old computer, which was stolen, and now I can't find it. Has anyone seen it?
Posted Sep 16, 2012, 6:16 AM UTC
Do you mean something like electronic analog computers? Or what kind of waves do you refer to?
No, it was surface waves. The two examples they give are ripples in a pool of water and compression waves/vibrations/acoustic waves in some sort of homogeneous surface (although now that I think of it you could have a 3D one with compression waves in a homogeneous mass). Part of the idea is that you can have them constructively or destructively interfere to create more complex logic.
Part of the idea is that you can have them constructively or destructively interfere to create more complex logic.
The problem is, wave equations are pretty much linear, usually. So all your outputs are nothing but linear combinations of inputs, and that's not interesting at all.
The paper laid out ways to make AND (two waves coincide at an output point) and OR gates (one, but not two, waves pass an output point) and from there you can do anything.
This is a very similar paper to what you are describing.
Multi-Frequency Magnonic Logic Circuits for Parallel Data Processing
This was really interesting, thank you, but unfortunately not the one I was looking for.
You may want to check out John Bush's publications.
Even if he wasn't involved in the particular work you're looking for (and I didn't go digging through all his papers), it sounds like you'll be interested in the work he does. For example, using bouncing water droplets to simulate (some aspects of) quantum mechanics: http://www-math.mit.edu/~bush/PNAS-2010-Bush.pdf
I will put him on my stack of "to read," it looks interesting! Thank you.
I think I know exactly what paper you are talking about, but unfortunately I can't find it. They additionally had a wave-based method that they claimed would act as a memory cell as well. It would resonate with a particular phase that could then be used to encode some analog value. If I recall correctly, it was not published in a traditional comp sci venue, rather it was "bio-inspired" some how. I am sorry I can't tell you more, but maybe that will help people with better google fu than me.
It was a neat idea, but they fell short of actually showing that it was a complete logic because they did no demonstrate that arbitrary logic constructions were possible.
We present a new method for the real-time simulation of fluid surface waves and their interactions with floating objects. The method is based on the new concept of wave particles, which offers a simple, fast, and unconditionally stable approach to wave simulation.
That one?
No, this was focused on computation using waves, not the study of waves themselves. No particle simulation in the paper I'm thinking of. Thanks though.
Be welcomed, I hope you find the paper.
that sounds really, really weird. I'd be interested to see the paper.