Hi Dhm,
What a magnificent discussion of the development of computer. We worked with analog computers during the early years at uni.
I had the priviledge, as a very junior engineer, of working with the engineers who, many years earlier, installed the first digital computer at Sydney uni in 1949 (Silliac, based on Ennica described in the video from a little after 14 minutes on). It was all valves and hand wired and took up a whole room, and would have had much less computing power than your mobile phone while generating enough heat to roast a bullock.
The problem of repeatablity of results due to manufacturing variations persists with silicon analog computers today.
That is why PvdM's inspired decision to build a digital neural network is so remarkable.
Digital circuits are much more immune to manufacturing variation than analog components.
This is the basic neural processing unit (NPU) which PvdM invented:
WO2020092691A1 AN IMPROVED SPIKING NEURAL NETWORK
It is purely digital. This is what makes it so malleable.
View attachment 1794
[some may recognize this from the other place as my favourite (Zeebot, can we have an English spell checker?) Akida picture].
Many university and competing commercial projects are attempting to use analog neurons, probably drawn by the close analogy between real neuron spikes and analog silicon spikes, but the problems such as manufacturing variability are hampering their progress.
Theoretically analog neuron more closely approximate digital neurons, but the practical difficulties of building reliable analog neurons have, to a large extent, stymied the progress of analog neurons.
In addition, SNNs are far more efficient than CNNs, the current vogue in neural networks, although Akida has been modified to convert CNN data to SNN inputs (digital "spikes", being individual binary digital bits, or in the latest embodiment Akida 1000 can accommodate up to 4-bit inputs and internal weights.
Thus existing CNN based systems, of which there are many, can be adapted to run much more efficiently on Akida.