Ernst Ising

Physicists Propose New Field of Study Related to Coherent Ising Machine

Retrieved on: 
Monday, October 19, 2020

A Coherent Ising Machine (CIM) is a special-purpose processor designed to address particularly difficult types of problems that can be mapped to an Ising model, such as combinatorial optimization problems.

Key Points: 
  • A Coherent Ising Machine (CIM) is a special-purpose processor designed to address particularly difficult types of problems that can be mapped to an Ising model, such as combinatorial optimization problems.
  • The Ising model, named after the physicist Ernst Ising, consists of variables that represent interacting spins, i.e.
  • A CIM is actually a network of optical parametric oscillators (OPOs) and solves problems by finding the spin configuration that minimizes a problems Ising energy function.
  • The first involves coherent spreading over local minima via quantum noise correlation; the second, implementing real-time error correction feedback.