Real-world optimization problems often require an external “modeling engine” that computes fitnesses or data that are then input to an objective function. These programs often have much longer ...

Over the past decades, researchers and companies worldwide have been trying to develop increasingly advanced quantum computers. The key objective of their efforts is to create systems that will ...

It’s been difficult to find important questions that quantum computers can answer faster than classical machines, but a new algorithm appears to do it for some critical optimization tasks. For ...

Optimization problems can be tricky, but they make the world work better. These kinds of questions, which strive for the best way of doing something, are absolutely everywhere. Your phone’s GPS ...

CAMBRIDGE, U.K. – A small Microsoft Research team had lofty goals when it set out four years ago to create an analog optical computer that would use light as a medium for solving complex problems.

There’s an old saying: When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Sometimes referred to as “the law of the instrument,” that hammer-and-nail idea is a common pitfall in ...