FET: Medium: ROCS: Recurrent Oscillatory Computing Systems for Rapid Solution of NP-Complete and Deep Learning Problems

从航班调度到医疗保健，当今世界存在大量的计算难题。大类的这些困难的问题可以减少到一种形式称为伊辛问题，这是密切相关的铁磁材料的基本物理。该项目基于最近设计的一种方法，该方法使用连接的互补金属氧化物半导体（CMOS）振荡器网络来快速有效地解决电子硬件中的伊辛问题，即，节拍器和落地大座钟的电子版。使用这种方法能够比目前可能的方法更快地解决大型现实问题，这将对社会产生广泛而有益的破坏性影响。该项目的活动包括课程开发、面向高中生的外联活动、每年的传播和互动讲习班以及科学和设计工具基础设施的开发。与以前的伊辛机方法不同，这种方法体积大，价格昂贵，不适合低成本的大规模生产，拟议的方法是一种纯粹的经典方案，不依赖于量子现象或新颖的纳米器件。它可以使用传统的CMOS电子器件来实现，其具有许多优点：可缩放性/可扩展性（即，在一个物理上很小的系统中有非常大数量的自旋），完善的设计过程和工具，基本上保证了硬件的首次工作，非常低的功耗操作，与控制和I/O逻辑的无缝集成，通过标准接口（如USB）的易于编程性，以及低成本的大规模生产。另一个关键优势涉及可变性，这是纳米级CMOS中的一个重要问题。与其他方案不同，在其他方案中，性能由于可变性而恶化，这种方法可以通过简单的基于VCO的校准将所有振荡器带到相同的频率来基本上消除可变性。另一个关键的潜在优势源于所提出的方案的连续/模拟性质（与纯数字算法相反）。计算实验表明，该计划所需的时间，以找到良好的解决方案的伊辛问题的增长只是非常缓慢的自旋的数量。这是一个显着的潜在优势，数字算法的硬件规模规模扩大到大量的自旋。此外，实际上任何类型的非线性振荡器（不仅仅是CMOS）都可以用于实现该方案，包括光学、微电子机械系统、生物化学、基于自旋力矩器件等，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Hard computational problems abound in today's world, from airline scheduling to healthcare. Large classes of these hard problems can be reduced to a form known as the Ising problem, which is closely related to the underlying physics of ferromagnetic materials. This project is based on a recently devised way to solve the Ising problem quickly and effectively in electronic hardware using networks of connected Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) oscillators, i.e., electronic equivalents of metronomes and grandfather clocks. Being able to solve large real-world problems much more quickly using this approach than what is currently possible will have broad and beneficially disruptive effects on society. The project's activities include course development, outreach to high-school students, yearly workshops for dissemination and interaction, and scientific and design tool infrastructure development.Unlike previous Ising machine approaches, which are large, expensive and ill-suited to low-cost mass production, the proposed approach is a purely classical scheme that does not rely on quantum phenomena or novel nano-devices. It can be implemented using conventional CMOS electronics, which has many advantages: scalability / miniaturisability (i.e., very large numbers of spins in a physically small system), well-established design processes and tools that essentially guarantee first-time working hardware, very low power operation, seamless integration with control and I/O logic, easy programmability via standard interfaces like USB, and low cost mass production. Another key advantage relates to variability, a significant problem in nanoscale CMOS. Unlike other schemes, where performance deteriorates due to variability, this approach can essentially eliminate variability by means of simple VCO-based calibration to bring all the oscillators to the same frequency. Yet another key potential advantage stems from the continuous/analog nature of the proposed scheme (as opposed to purely digital algorithms). Computational experiments indicate that the time the scheme takes to find good solutions of the Ising problem grows only very slowly with respect to the number of spins.This is a significant potential advantage over digital algorithms as hardware sizes scale up to large numbers of spins. In addition, virtually any type of nonlinear oscillator (not just CMOS) can be used to implement this scheme, including optical, micro-electronic mechanical systems, biochemical, spin torque device based, etc., oscillators.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.