Researchers create new computer combining optical and electronic technology

A fully-programmable 100-spin coherent Ising machine with all-to-all connections

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2016/10/21/scien...

This group at Stanford, collaborates closely with the Takesue group in Japan, who have the scaled version (2000 Node) ising machine in another article in Science:

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2016/10/19/scien...

Is there any sense in which this is solving NP-complete problems in polynomial time? They're clearly aiming at NP-complete problems, but it's not clear how efficient this machine is or how general it is.

They are developing system that could provide good heuristic solutions to NP-complete problem. That does not count as being able to _solve_ NP-complete problems. It won't find optimal solution in all cases, but it can be practically very useful.

Their approach falls into the same category as simulated annealing or shrinking bubbles: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/512821/shrinking-blob-com...

D-Wave does that with supposedly quantum version of 'spin glass' model, a generalization of the Ising model.