Modern reconfigurable analog computers target differential equations, not neural networks, and their claimed edge is a solution time independent of problem size

The serious primary literature on the 2020s analog-computer revival — reconfigurable analog machines such as Anabrid's LUCIDAC and REDAC — is about dynamical systems and differential equations, not about neural networks. The arXiv paper Reconfigurable Analog Computers (2510.25942, Oct 2025) frames these devices as co-processors for coupled and nonlinear ordinary differential equations, and never mentions neural-network inference.

The measurable edge the paper claims is asymptotic rather than a headline efficiency number: "the solution time on an analog computer is basically constant, regardless of the number of computing elements required," whereas digital solution time "typically grows with problem size, often much worse than linearly." Because an analog computer integrates the governing equations physically and in parallel — every computing element settling simultaneously — adding more state variables does not lengthen the wall-clock solve the way it does for a sequential digital integrator. This is a claim about the shape of the scaling curve, not about joules or seconds: the paper gives no benchmarked energy or time comparison, so the "measurably worse" framing for digital remains [unverified-quant] (see question-verify-reconfigurable-analog-computer-ode-benchmark).

This continues a lineage the vault already tracks in its historical form. Lukyanov's 1936 Water Integrator solved partial differential equations by letting water levels stand for variables, and it sits in a convergent-invention pair with Phillips's MONIAC. The reconfigurable electronic analog computer is the same idea — compute by physical analogy to the equations — modernized into a programmable co-processor.

Crucially, this differential-equation lineage is distinct from the analog-inference lineage (see claim-encharge-en100-switched-capacitor-in-memory-compute). They are different companies, different mechanisms, and different problems; press coverage of an "analog revival" tends to conflate the two.