LightSolver Announces Breakthrough in Physical Modeling on the LPU and New Roadmap for Optical, Analog PDE Solving
Optical Supercomputer to Harness the Power of 100K Lasers by 2027
TEL AVIV, Israel, Sept. 16, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- LightSolver, inventors of a new laser-based computing paradigm, today announced it has achieved a major technological breakthrough: the ability to directly map Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) onto its Laser Processing Unit (LPU). By leveraging a 2D grid of coupled lasers, the system can now solve PDEs such as the heat equation and Poisson equation, and extend to additional types, such as wave dynamics and Schrödinger’s equation. This achievement transforms the LPU into a platform capable of accelerating scientific discovery, engineering design, and computational physics.
Until now, LPUs were best suited for fully connected optimization problems with hundreds of spins. LightSolver’s breakthrough leverages the fact that lasers are electromagnetic waves and therefore can simulate physical phenomena as they appear in nature. With the new architecture, LightSolver is now able to compute these sparse systems and scale rapidly. This accelerates its roadmap to 100,000 variables by 2027 and one million by 2029, unlocking unprecedented modeling capacity. In the coming weeks, LightSolver will offer relevant researchers and industry professionals access to the LPU Lab, which consists of an Alpha version of its hardware and a digital emulator, offering a glimpse into the future commercial-grade processor.
“Classical computers digitize analog nature, and we pay the price in longer run times and wasted energy. By running large-scale physics simulations on a physical machine, we can solve them more efficiently than any HPC or quantum system available today,” said Ruti Ben-Shlomi, CEO and co-founder of LightSolver. “Our LPU comes with a compiler, so it doesn’t require anyone to understand laser physics; it automatically translates PDEs to direct instructions for the lasers that run in the system.”
Solving PDEs with Light
Partial differential equations underpin simulations in fields ranging from fluid dynamics and heat transfer to electromagnetism and structural mechanics, but large-scale solving has been hampered by the computational limits of digital hardware. While quantum computers promise exponential speedups for certain PDE problems, their real-world performance is constrained by I/O bottlenecks, memory bandwidth limitations, and the need for tens to hundreds of statistical trials to reach reliable results, even with 1,000 logical qubits.
LightSolver’s fundamentally different approach utilizes lasers both as a computing and storage medium, eliminating data transfer bottlenecks. The system achieves constant-time iteration steps—on the order of nanoseconds—independent of problem size, enabling speed gains of up to 100× compared to GPU-based solvers. Because the LPU requires no external run-time memory or heavy statistical sampling, the problem is encoded once, and each convergence reflects a true physical trial, delivering fast, scalable, and energy-efficient solutions.
Researchers at LightSolver presented on this topic at ACM Computing Frontiers 2025 and recently published a peer-reviewed paper with their findings titled “Solving Partial Differential Equations on an Analog, Optical Platform.”
Market Progress
In addition to its technological evolution, the company has made significant progress in the marketplace. Notable achievements include a partnership with Ansys and active collaborations with HPC centers and national labs, positioning the technology for significant real-world impact.
About LightSolver
LightSolver is a photonic computing company that is developing an all-optical supercomputer capable of solving complex and large computational problems at the speed of light. Utilizing the interference patterns of lasers, the Laser Processing Unit™ (LPU) can tackle challenges that were previously constrained by the limits of electronics, while fitting into a rack unit and operating at room temperature. Dr. Ruti Ben-Shlomi and Dr. Chene Tradonsky, physicists from the world-renowned Weizmann Institute, founded the company in 2020. The majority of the team are physics, math and computer science PhDs. LightSolver has secured investment from TAL Ventures, Entree Capital, IBI Tech Fund, Angular Ventures, Maverick, and Artofin. The company has also secured €12.5M in grants and equity from the European Innovation Council (EIC) to advance its all-optical supercomputer. Connect with LightSolver @LightSolverCo on X and on LinkedIn. For more information, visit lightsolver.com or email info@lightsolver.com.
Media Contact: Seth Menacker Fusion PR lightsolver@fusionpr.com
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