Very cool work - refreshing to see a of different approach. I learned about Kuramoto oscillators many years ago from a book called Sync, by Steven Strogatz, which I highly recommend.
Un-0: Generating Images with Coupled Oscillators
21–30 of 59 posts
Re: Un-0: Generating Images with Coupled Oscillators
#22It’s not clear to me how this would ever be practical since it seems dependent on n^2 scaling. You’ve got to wonder when you have an image generation demo why would you possibly have 64 x 64 pixel output as your demo? If I’m understanding this properly to generate a 4K image, you need like 5 trillion point to point connections on the chip. Even if power use from the oscillators is zero that’s going to be an issue.
The oscillating elements don't map directly to pixels. Conventional models also have n^2 parameters.
Re: Un-0: Generating Images with Coupled Oscillators
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
What they are trying to achieve is to demonstrate that the coupling approach works in a simulated physics environment (O(n^2) as you point out) so that they can then build CMOS circuits that create actual oscillators and then let the laws of physics do the computation. This is a very bold vision!
And anyone who has done an introductory course in VLSI design would know that capacitance (coupling) is something you usually want to get rid of. However, all kinds of amazing analog circuits have been developed over the decades that exploit coupling effects. So, their idea is not outlandish at all.
Which idea is not outlandish? Physical computing? I agree physical computing is a fascinating topic.
But specifically what they’ve simulated here? I don’t see how that would ever work in real life scaled up to any kind of real size.
I’m not criticizing them for starting out small. Lots of things can be proven with small models. I’m saying in principle, I don’t see how this will work unless there’s some fundamentally new technique that is currently not known about. Maybe they have some secret idea but they haven’t shown it here.
Re: Un-0: Generating Images with Coupled Oscillators
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
What they are trying to achieve is to demonstrate that the coupling approach works in a simulated physics environment (O(n^2) as you point out) so that they can then build CMOS circuits that create actual oscillators and then let the laws of physics do the computation. This is a very bold vision!
And anyone who has done an introductory course in VLSI design would know that capacitance (coupling) is something you usually want to get rid of. However, all kinds of amazing analog circuits have been developed over the decades that exploit coupling effects. So, their idea is not outlandish at all.
But wouldn't capacitance as it naturally occurs be only to immediate neighbors? Not n^2 as in their model.
Re: Un-0: Generating Images with Coupled Oscillators
#25It’s not clear to me how this would ever be practical since it seems dependent on n^2 scaling. You’ve got to wonder when you have an image generation demo why would you possibly have 64 x 64 pixel output as your demo? If I’m understanding this properly to generate a 4K image, you need like 5 trillion point to point connections on the chip. Even if power use from the oscillators is zero that’s going to be an issue.
The oscillating elements don't map directly to pixels. Conventional models also have n^2 parameters.
Well image generators work differently…
Do you mean that they may get away with less oscillators because of the decoder layer? Well there’s the rub isn’t it, the more work you have done by a software layer the less power you’ve proportionally saved by having it be done by physical computing.
But let’s spitball here what would you estimate would be needed in number of oscillators and interconnects for a 4K image?
Re: Un-0: Generating Images with Coupled Oscillators
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
And anyone who has done an introductory course in VLSI design would know that capacitance (coupling) is something you usually want to get rid of. However, all kinds of amazing analog circuits have been developed over the decades that exploit coupling effects. So, their idea is not outlandish at all.
Which idea is not outlandish? Physical computing? I agree physical computing is a fascinating topic. But specifically what they’ve simulated here? I don’t see how that would ever work in real life scaled up to any kind of real size. I’m not criticizing them for starting out small. Lots of things can be proven with small models. I’m saying in principle, I don’t see how this will work unless there’s some fundamentally…
At 5k to 10k nodes aren't they in the ballpark of a single layer from a scaled up conventional model? Rather than scaling further presumably you could stack these. However for a physical implementation ~100M interconnects seems questionable to me (but I know next to nothing about hardware engineering TBF) so I wonder if they intend to move to a partially connected model similar to the gyroscopic model of computation that the article links to.
Re: Un-0: Generating Images with Coupled Oscillators
#27When 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.
Noise and component imprecision has always limited analog computing.
Re: Un-0: Generating Images with Coupled Oscillators
#28It’s not clear to me how this would ever be practical since it seems dependent on n^2 scaling. You’ve got to wonder when you have an image generation demo why would you possibly have 64 x 64 pixel output as your demo? If I’m understanding this properly to generate a 4K image, you need like 5 trillion point to point connections on the chip. Even if power use from the oscillators is zero that’s going to be an issue.
Think of the models making progress on CIFAR-10, ImageNet, CelebA, etc. 15 years ago. They had issues too and weren't just scaled-up as is to the architectures we have today.
Re: Un-0: Generating Images with Coupled Oscillators
#29[deleted]
Re: Un-0: Generating Images with Coupled Oscillators
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
The oscillating elements don't map directly to pixels. Conventional models also have n^2 parameters.
Well image generators work differently… Do you mean that they may get away with less oscillators because of the decoder layer? Well there’s the rub isn’t it, the more work you have done by a software layer the less power you’ve proportionally saved by having it be done by physical computing. But let’s spitball here what would you estimate would be needed in number of oscillators and interconnects for a 4K image?
Conventional image generators still have to process n^2 connections so I don't think that observation is a valid objection in and of itself.
One thing I'm unclear on is that their total parameter count scales similarly to conventional models but many of those conventional models incorporate convolutions. I wonder how interconnect count (as opposed to unique parameters) compares to performance?
As to 4k images, I'm not clear how much farther their current architecture would be expected to scale. Single layer networks aren't parameter efficient compared to deep networks; I'd naively assume that to also apply here. That said given their results so far with what amounts to a single layer the naive assumption begins to seem questionable.