Comment by mattkrause
5 hours ago
Some analog devices are "DSP" in a wig, but all digital signal processing is really just a convenience wrapper around analog current flow. A very handy one, admittedly, but one that might not always be worth it.
There’s also a lot of path dependency. SHA256 makes a lot of sense once you already have lots of digital data but you’d probably do something else entirely in a more analog world.
What would you do if you need to encrypt data using analog computer?
Suppose you have some analog dataset, say 1000 readings between 0 and 100 V, and your sensor allows to resolve the values up to 0.1 V precision. Now you need to encrypt that data before, say, sending them over radio. How would you do it?
While I agree that there are quite good reasons why digital computers won over their analog relatives, you're now making me think how we could exploit the analog nature of what you're describing for encryption. I have a gut feeling that there would be a way. Encrypting something is about adding noise to the message anyway, and analog is very good at noise. The issue would be reproducing the exact same noise (or close enough, since in your example we need 0.1 V resolution) on the receiving end. Here, an electronic engineer could help.