Two UTokyo researchers have built a supercomputer for simulating star cluster dynamics with up to 32K bodies. Their "gravity pipe" uses 1,692 copies of a custom chip, at a cost of just $1.5M over two years. [Popular Science, 12/96, p. 32. EDUPAGE.]

For a somewhat bizarre analog processor, see Jonathan Mills' "The Continuous Retina: Image Processing with a Single-Sensor Artificial Neural Field Network" in Proc. 1996 Int. Conf. on Neural Networks. Mill's chip solves the diffusion equation (Laplacian) using charge gradient in a conductive sheet (n-well inside a diode guard ring), sampled to generate a current input to piecewise-linear functions stored as digitally reconfigurable continuous-valued logic functions (similar to fuzzy logic). Only the latter functions employ transistors, on about 1/3 of the chip. The chip can be used as a silicon retina or for any physical computation modeled by diffusion -- including certain neural networks (without neurons!). Although not efficient for all problems, the programmable processors are universal in a theoretical sense. [, comp.arch, 11/27/96.]

("Inside every digital circuit, there's an analog signal screaming to get out." -- Al Kovalick, Hewlett-Packard.)

Moshe Sipper has a new page on "Cellular Programming: Evolution of Parallel Cellular Machines." . [, comp.theory.cell-automata, 11/22/96.]