Oscillator-based Ising machine applied for Max-Cut in massively large and sparse graphs
Luciano Mazza, Eleonora Raimondo, Mario Carpentieri, Giovanni Finocchio, Vito Puliafito · Scientific Reports · 2026
Solving large-scale combinatorial optimization problems, such as Max-Cut, is crucial for a variety of applications such as network analysis and finance. Ising machines are emerging as unconventional computing paradigms for facing those problems while promising to reduce energy consumption and time-to-solution as compared to traditional methods such as the Goemans-Williamson algorithm. Here, we implement and benchmark a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)-native software-based implementation of oscillator-based Ising machine (OIM) which can solve Max-Cut problems up to 20 million spins within a regular graph with degree 25. The benchmarked implementation is running on a single GPU, but it is scalable to multi-GPU platforms. Additionally, we identify an annealing strategy that searches the ground state with the help of dynamical checkpoints as bifurcation points in the dynamical phase space of the Max-Cut problems mapped into the Ising Hamiltonian, enabling the algorithm for a fast local search. The OIM consistently achieves accuracy averaging above 99.5% (up to 99.9%) for G-set problems.