Microsoft's Light-Based, Transistor-less Computer Solves Complex Optimization Problems at the Speed of Light

"Picture a world where computing is not limited by the binary confines of zeros and ones, but instead, is free to explore the vast possibilities of continuous value data." That's Microsoft's research blog, describing its newly-developed Analog Iterative Machine, an analog optical computer designed for solving difficult optimization problems."For a multidisciplinary group of researchers at the Microsoft Research Lab in Cambridge, U.K., the mission was to build a new kind of computer that would tr