Analog–digital hybrids

 Analog computing devices are fast; digital computing devices are more versatile and accurate. The idea behind an analog-digital hybrid is to combine the two processes for the best efficiency. An example of such hybrid elementary device is the hybrid multiplier, where one input is an analog signal, the other input is a digital signal and the output is analog. It acts as an analog potentiometer, upgradable digitally. This kind of hybrid technique is mainly used for fast dedicated real time computation when computing time is very critical, as signal processing for radars and generally for controllers in embedded systems.

In the early 1970s, analog computer manufacturers tried to tie together their analog computers with a digital computers to get the advantages of the two techniques. In such systems, the digital computer controlled the analog computer, providing initial set-up, initiating multiple analog runs, and automatically feeding and collecting data. The digital computer may also participate to the calculation itself using analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters.

The largest manufacturer of hybrid computers was Electronic Associates. Their hybrid computer model 8900 was made of a digital computer and one or more analog consoles. These systems were mainly dedicated to large projects such as the Apollo program and Space Shuttle at NASA, or Ariane in Europe, especially during the integration step where at the beginning everything is simulated, and progressively real components replace their simulated parts.^[37]

Only one company was known as offering general commercial computing services on its hybrid computers, CISI of France, in the 1970s.

The best reference in this field is the 100,000 simulation runs for each certification of the automatic landing systems of Airbus and Concorde aircraft.^[38]

After 1980, purely digital computers progressed more and more rapidly and were fast enough to compete with analog computers. One key to the speed of analog computers was their fully parallel computation, but this was also a limitation. The more equations required for a problem, the more analog components were needed, even when the problem wasn't time critical. "Programming" a problem meant interconnecting the analog operators; even with a removable wiring panel this was not very versatile. Today there are no more big hybrid computers, but only hybrid components.^{[citation needed]}