Microsoft's Analog Optical Computer Shows AI Promise (microsoft.com)
(Sunday September 07, 2025 @09:34PM (EditorDavid)
from the light-reading dept.)
- Reference: 0179075504
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/09/08/0125250/microsofts-analog-optical-computer-shows-ai-promise
- Source link: https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/innovation/microsoft-analog-optical-computer-cracks-two-practical-problems-shows-ai-promise/
Four years ago a small Microsoft Research team started creating [1]an analog optical computer . They used commercially available parts like sensors from smartphone cameras, optical lenses, and micro-LED lights finer than a human hair. "As the light passes through the sensor at different intensities, the analog optical computer can add and multiply numbers," [2]explains a Microsoft blog post .
They envision the technology scaling to a computer that for certain problems is 100X faster and 100X more energy efficient — running AI workloads "with a fraction of the energy needed and at much greater speed than the GPUs running today's large language models." The results are described in a paper published [3]in the scientific journal Nature , according to the blog post:
> At the same time, Microsoft is publicly sharing its " [4]optimization solver" algorithm and the [5]"digital twin" it developed so that researchers from other organizations can investigate this new computing paradigm and propose new problems to solve and new ways to solve them. Francesca Parmigiani, a Microsoft principal research manager who leads the team developing the AOC, explained that the digital twin is a computer-based model that mimics how the real analog optical computer [or "AOC"] behaves; it simulates the same inputs, processes and outputs, but in a digital environment — like a software version of the hardware. This allowed the Microsoft researchers and collaborators to solve optimization problems at a scale that would be useful in real situations. This digital twin will also allow other users to experiment with how problems, either in optimization or in AI, would be mapped and run on the analog optical computer hardware. "To have the kind of success we are dreaming about, we need other researchers to be experimenting and thinking about how this hardware can be used," Parmigiani said.
>
> Hitesh Ballani, who directs research on future AI infrastructure at the Microsoft Research lab in Cambridge, U.K. said he believes the AOC could be a game changer. "We have actually delivered on the hard promise that it can make a big difference in two real-world problems in two domains, banking and healthcare," he said. Further, "we opened up a whole new application domain by showing that exactly the same hardware could serve AI models, too." In the healthcare example described in the Nature paper, the researchers used the digital twin to reconstruct MRI scans with a good degree of accuracy. The research indicates that the device could theoretically cut the time it takes to do those scans from 30 minutes to five. In the banking example, the AOC succeeded in resolving a complex optimization test case with a high degree of accuracy...
>
> As researchers refine the AOC, adding more and more micro-LEDs, it could eventually have millions or even more than a billion weights. At the same time, it should get smaller and smaller as parts are miniaturized, researchers say.
[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/aoc/
[2] https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/innovation/microsoft-analog-optical-computer-cracks-two-practical-problems-shows-ai-promise/
[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09430-z
[4] https://microsoft.github.io/AOCoptimizer.jl/
[5] https://github.com/microsoft/aoc
They envision the technology scaling to a computer that for certain problems is 100X faster and 100X more energy efficient — running AI workloads "with a fraction of the energy needed and at much greater speed than the GPUs running today's large language models." The results are described in a paper published [3]in the scientific journal Nature , according to the blog post:
> At the same time, Microsoft is publicly sharing its " [4]optimization solver" algorithm and the [5]"digital twin" it developed so that researchers from other organizations can investigate this new computing paradigm and propose new problems to solve and new ways to solve them. Francesca Parmigiani, a Microsoft principal research manager who leads the team developing the AOC, explained that the digital twin is a computer-based model that mimics how the real analog optical computer [or "AOC"] behaves; it simulates the same inputs, processes and outputs, but in a digital environment — like a software version of the hardware. This allowed the Microsoft researchers and collaborators to solve optimization problems at a scale that would be useful in real situations. This digital twin will also allow other users to experiment with how problems, either in optimization or in AI, would be mapped and run on the analog optical computer hardware. "To have the kind of success we are dreaming about, we need other researchers to be experimenting and thinking about how this hardware can be used," Parmigiani said.
>
> Hitesh Ballani, who directs research on future AI infrastructure at the Microsoft Research lab in Cambridge, U.K. said he believes the AOC could be a game changer. "We have actually delivered on the hard promise that it can make a big difference in two real-world problems in two domains, banking and healthcare," he said. Further, "we opened up a whole new application domain by showing that exactly the same hardware could serve AI models, too." In the healthcare example described in the Nature paper, the researchers used the digital twin to reconstruct MRI scans with a good degree of accuracy. The research indicates that the device could theoretically cut the time it takes to do those scans from 30 minutes to five. In the banking example, the AOC succeeded in resolving a complex optimization test case with a high degree of accuracy...
>
> As researchers refine the AOC, adding more and more micro-LEDs, it could eventually have millions or even more than a billion weights. At the same time, it should get smaller and smaller as parts are miniaturized, researchers say.
[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/aoc/
[2] https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/innovation/microsoft-analog-optical-computer-cracks-two-practical-problems-shows-ai-promise/
[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09430-z
[4] https://microsoft.github.io/AOCoptimizer.jl/
[5] https://github.com/microsoft/aoc
Analog computing again? (Score:2)
by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 )
Well, we did get the miracle of the opamp out of it once, maybe we'll get something useful out of this as well.
Re: (Score:2)
by Mspangler ( 770054 )
Optical opamp is the first thing I thought too.
That's Astounding (Score:2)
by rossdee ( 243626 )
or at least it used to be...
Oh FFS... Enough with the AI plugs already (Score:2)
by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 )
What next? An AI-power Microsoft mouse pad? AI-powered Microsoft toilet roll holder?
Look, we know you sunk five kajillion dollars in AI and you ain't got nothing to show for it. Quite ramming it down everybody's throats already!
So, correct me if I'm wrong (Score:2)
But at least at a first read through TFA, it appears the titular optical computer doesn't actually exist yet - to this point, everything is happening on the "digital twin".
Re: (Score:2)
It took me a while to find it, but it looks like they have actually built something -> [1]https://news.microsoft.com/sou... [microsoft.com]
[1] https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/innovation/building-a-computer-that-solves-practical-problems-at-the-speed-of-light/
Re: (Score:3)
> It took me a while to find it, but it looks like they have actually built something -> [1]https://news.microsoft.com/sou... [microsoft.com]
What they've built is a 8-variable optical computer. They're hoping to scale this up soon, but the amount of scaling isn't mentioned.
Of course, this completely misses the key challenge of AI computing. The ALU/compute part is the easy part. It's a small part of the chip and it consumes a small part of the power. The key problem is data movement, particularly how to quickly and efficiently grab billions of variables from memory, send them to billions of compute units, then send those outputs to the next
[1] https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/innovation/building-a-computer-that-solves-practical-problems-at-the-speed-of-light/
Re: So, correct me if I'm wrong (Score:1)
or, analog twin. What they're building sounds like an analog computer. Electronic analog computers are pretty much nonexistant by that name these days, but use to be used for, as in this case, near instanraneous solutions to differential equations and other specific problems. Analog control systems exist, which are similar, but with different application.