Extended-variable probabilistic computing with p-dits

Ising machines can solve combinatorial optimization problems by representing them as energy minimization problems. A common implementation is the probabilistic Ising machine (PIM), which uses probabilistic (p-) bits to represent coupled binary spins. However, many real-world problems have complex data representations that do not map naturally into a binary encoding, leading to a significant increase in hardware resources and time-to-solution. Here, we describe a generalized spin model that supports an arbitrary number of spin dimensions, each with an arbitrary real component. We define the probabilistic d-dimensional bit (p-dit) as the base unit of a p-computing implementation of this model. We further describe two restricted forms of p-dits for specific classes of common problems and implement them experimentally on an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC): (A) isotropic p-dits, which simplify the implementation of categorical variables resulting in ~34x performance improvement compared to a p-bit implementation on an example 3-partition problem. (B) Probabilistic integers (p-ints), which simplify the representation of numeric values and provide ~5x improvement compared to a p-bit implementation of an example integer linear programming (ILP) problem. Additionally, we report a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) p-int-based integer quadratic programming (IQP) solver which shows ~64x faster time-to-solution compared to the best of a series of state-of-the-art software solvers. The generalized formulation of probabilistic variables presented here provides a path to solving large-scale optimization problems on various hardware platforms including digital CMOS.