Emerging Directions in Optical Computing and Information Processing
June 26 and 27, 2025 – Virtual Conference
Circuits That Solve Optimization Problems by Exploiting Physics Inequalities
Eli Yablonovitch
Abstract
Optimization is vital to Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, and to many areas of Science. Mathematically, we usually employ steepest-descent, or other digital algorithms. But every inequality in Physics performs optimization in the normal course of dynamical evolution—for free. In effect, Physics can provide machines which solve digital optimization problems much faster than any conventional computer.