The Applied Physics research group of the VUB has developed a new generation of optical computers, so-called Coherent Ising machines. Such a "coherent Ising machine" can be considerably faster and more energy efficient than the current conventional digital computer when solving optimization problems. Until now they were unfortunately very large, expensive and difficult to build, because they use miles of optical fibers and powerful laser systems.
The team of Fabian Böhm, Prof. Guy Verschaffelt and Prof. Guy Van der Sande has greatly reduced these machines and simplified them into a portable system. In the future, the system can even be reduced to just a few millimeters in size. This makes these "coherent Ising machines" cheap and practical enough for commercial use for the first time. The research result is published in Nature Communications.
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