Engineers built a simple circuit that uses microwaves to solve impossible math problems the second you flip the switch.
March 27, 2026
Original Paper
Analog Computing with Hybrid Couplers and Phase Shifters
arXiv · 2603.24604
The Takeaway
Instead of using silicon chips to crunch numbers one by one, this device uses the natural physics of radio wave interference to find answers at the speed of light. This suggests we could perform high-speed computing without the massive heat and energy requirements of traditional digital processors.
From the abstract
Analog computing with microwave signals can enable exceptionally fast computations, potentially surpassing the limits of conventional digital computing. For example, by letting some input signals propagate through a linear microwave network and reading the corresponding output signals, we can instantly compute a matrix-vector product without any digital operations. In this paper, we investigate the computational capabilities of linear microwave networks made exclusively of two low-cost and funda