Un-0: Generating Images with Coupled Oscillators

When I first learned about computer science at the age of 11 or so (and in 1982 or so) the first page of the text book put digital and analogue computers on what seemed to be an equal footing. And then proceeded to ignore the latter for the rest of the book. Apart from a few notable exceptions ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Machine ) I've often wondered about analogue computing.

Re: Un-0: Generating Images with Coupled Oscillators

#6

Post by fc417fc802 » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 10:04 PM UTC

fusionadvocate wrote: post #4

Is this somewhat related to reservoir computing?

(Disclaimer, not my area of expertise.) It appears to be adjacent but more general. There's an entire collection of methods (including reservoir computing) that conceptually resemble or are based on physical systems in one way or another. This appears to be an attempt to develop a new method that natively takes place as a physical process that we could readily implement in hardware.

Re: Un-0: Generating Images with Coupled Oscillators

#7

Post by NopIdoN » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 10:07 PM UTC

> However, the trade-off with our approach is that it requires a more complex loss that operates given only generated samples.

Re: Un-0: Generating Images with Coupled Oscillators

#8

Post by OutOfHere » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 10:27 PM UTC

Can this even make an image having more than one "class"? Can it make an image of an astronaut riding a horse on the moon?

Re: Un-0: Generating Images with Coupled Oscillators

#9

Post by ainch » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 11:03 PM UTC

This method is cool and the post explains it well. It would, however, be good to get more detail on the energy efficiency they flag as their motivation: is this model actually more energy efficient than the comparators they highlight?

Re: Un-0: Generating Images with Coupled Oscillators

#10

Post by TaupeRanger » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 11:09 PM UTC

Really interesting - if I understood the article correctly, they're simulating this on conventional hardware, so in order to get the proposed benefits, it would need to be implemented in some other electronic medium.