Experimental Demonstration of Duffing Oscillator-Based Analog Ising Machines

This paper presents a proof-of-concept analog Ising Machine, which can solve combinatorial optimization problems using bifurcations in networks of coupled Duffing oscillators. The proof-of-concept system consists of a network of four coupled Duffing oscillators implemented with low-cost components on a prototyping board. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed prototype operates as an Ising Machine and it can solve various Max-Cut problems. This work provides the foundation towards realizing analog Ising Machines based on circuits that exhibit bifurcation properties, such as the Duffing oscillators, and that can be scaled to large networks.