Overview

• Researchers built the prototype from consumer‑grade parts such as micro‑LEDs, optical lenses and smartphone camera sensors, mapping key optimization operations onto light.
• The Nature paper projects about 500 tera‑operations per second per watt at 8‑bit precision, described as potentially over 100 times more efficient than leading GPUs for certain tasks.
• Microsoft collaborated with Barclays on a delivery‑versus‑payment securities‑settlement optimization, with a Barclays engineer co‑authoring the paper and supplying datasets.
• The team stresses the device is not a general‑purpose computer, positioning it for targeted optimization and AI workloads pending scaling and independent validation.
• Satya Nadella praised the work on X after publication, as the group highlighted digital‑twin experiments including MRI reconstruction and early machine‑learning mappings.