Analog integrators have the problem that small signals are affected by the noise of the circuit and large signals are limited by the supply voltage. In the hybrid integrator, mixed digital and analog signal processing increases the maximum possible difference between the smallest and largest signals, which can be almost any size. The hybrid integrator has improved detection of dynamic input signals, which further improves the dynamic range.

This paper discusses modern applications for high performance analog and hybrid computer. In the first part, we do a theoretical prediction concerning the properties of these machines. In the second part, we compare such a computer against a standard laptop CPU. We find that the even a rather simple analog computer is actually on a par. In the third part, we give an outlook how future highly integrated analog computers could be used to tackle very large computational problems.

Analog environmental signals must be converted to digital for processing and transmitting. This analog to digital conversion is usually done with a constant rate. To save energy during conversion and transmission this conversion rate can be made adaptable to the signal form, which is called asynchronous A-to-D conversion. Before digital processing the asynchronous sampled data must be interpolated to a constant rate. This interpolation is subject of the article. The work was funded by the DFG.