{"id":230909,"date":"2026-02-09T10:02:58","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T16:02:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/light-based-ising-computer-runs-at-room-temperature-and-stays-stable-for-hours"},"modified":"2026-02-09T10:02:58","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T16:02:58","slug":"light-based-ising-computer-runs-at-room-temperature-and-stays-stable-for-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/light-based-ising-computer-runs-at-room-temperature-and-stays-stable-for-hours","title":{"rendered":"Light-based Ising computer runs at room temperature and stays stable for hours"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/light-based-ising-computer-runs-at-room-temperature-and-stays-stable-for-hours.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A team of researchers at Queen\u2019s University has developed a powerful new kind of computing machine that uses light to take on complex problems such as protein folding (for drug discovery) and number partitioning (for cryptography). Built from off-the-shelf components, it also operates at room temperature and remains remarkably stable while performing billions of operations per second. The research was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-025-09838-7\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in Nature.<\/p>\n<p>The breakthrough shows that it is possible to build a practical and scalable machine that can tackle extremely difficult problems.<\/p>\n<p>The project, led by Bhavin Shastri, Canada Research Chair in <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/news\/2022-04-brain-inspired-neural-networks-based.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\" target=\"_blank\">Neuromorphic Photonic Computing<\/a> and professor in the Department of Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy, with a team of his graduate students including Nayem Al Kayed and Hugh Morison, uses commercially available lasers, fiber optics, and modulators\u2014the same technology that powers today\u2019s internet infrastructure. The team partnered with McGill University researcher David Plant and his graduate student Charles St-Arnault.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A team of researchers at Queen\u2019s University has developed a powerful new kind of computing machine that uses light to take on complex problems such as protein folding (for drug discovery) and number partitioning (for cryptography). Built from off-the-shelf components, it also operates at room temperature and remains remarkably stable while performing billions of operations [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1523,1625,418],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-computing","category-encryption","category-internet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230909\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}