SUB-NANOSECOND MRAM ISING MACHINE TACKLES CHIP-DESIGN OPTIMIZATION PROBLEMS

Summary from the TLDR Hardware newsletter

A Nature Electronics paper from Sai Li, Zhang, and colleagues describes an Ising machine built from CMOS-integrated magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM) that switches magnetic states in under a nanosecond using electrical pulses. Ising machines map an optimization problem onto a network of coupled magnetic spins and let the system settle toward its lowest-energy state, which encodes the best combination of options, so the fast, controllable magnetic switching here is what does the searching.