A fully programmable 100-spin coherent Ising machine with all-to-all connections

Area of Science:

• Quantum computing
• Computational physics
• Optical engineering

Background:

• Standard digital computers face limitations in solving complex combinatorial optimization problems.
• Unconventional computing architectures can leverage unique operating mechanisms for accelerated solutions.
• Ising problems represent a class of computationally intensive optimization challenges.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a scalable optical processor with electronic feedback for solving hard computational problems.
• To demonstrate a room-temperature technology for large-scale implementation.
• To evaluate the processor's capability in solving Ising problems.

Main Methods:

• Development of a scalable optical processor architecture.
• Integration of electronic feedback mechanisms.
• Testing with diverse and hard instances of Ising problems up to 100 spins.

Main Results:

• The prototype machine successfully found exact solutions for certain Ising problem instances.
• The processor effectively sampled good approximate solutions for complex problems.
• Demonstrated scalability and room-temperature operability of the optical processor.

Conclusions:

• Scalable optical processors with electronic feedback offer a viable pathway for tackling difficult computational tasks.
• This technology shows promise for accelerating solutions to large-scale combinatorial optimizations.
• The developed prototype advances the field of specialized computing hardware.