Experiments in very large-scale analog computation
Douglas Kerns · CaltechTHESIS (California Institute of Technology) · 2007
The easy and inexpensive availability of microelectronic prototype fabrication allows us to perform many kinds of experiments in the construction of electronic computational machinery. There has been a recent resurgence in analog computation in various guises: electronic implementations of neural networks, other kinds of neuromorphic circuits, and electronic simulations of various physical systems. This text documents a set of experiments in analog computation in silicon, and includes a short discussion of the relative advantages of analog vs digital computation. The most generally useful result of the work is the development of a set of techniques that allow analog circuits to automatically trim themselves, turning marginal components into devices of good precision.