by KFC, Technology Review
A stochastic computer, designed to help an autonomous vehicle navigate, outperforms a conventional computer by three orders of magnitude, say computer scientists. Stochastic computing is one of logic’s little gems. Its advantage is essentially that it makes multiplication as easy as addition. That’s significant. Imagine adding 0.4397625 and 0.8723489. It’s a calculation you could do in your head in a few seconds. But imagine multiplying those two numbers instead. That’s still something you could do in your head but I bet you’d feel happier reaching for a calculator. Conventional computers have a similar problem. Adding numbers is straightforward but multiplying them is much more intensive. Stochastic computers change all this. That’s because they represent numbers using probability: as a stream of bits with a certain probability of being a number.
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27598/?p1=blogs
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