An aside: Energy efficiency and biology
Biology is incredibly energy efficient
- Think of what a fly does at a few mW power consumption
- Visual processing
- Dynamical (flight) control
- Find food, mate, escape, ...
Biology uses physical phenomena as computing primitives
- No switches
- Compares relative values of analog signals
- Versus absolute values of digital signals
- Adaptive techniques mitigate component differences
- Adaptation leads naturally to learning