Restoring Sparsity in Potts Machines via Mean-Field Constraints

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Callahan-Coray, Kevin, Lee, Kyle, Jiang, Kyle, Camsari, Kerem Y.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Callahan-Coray, Kevin
Lee, Kyle
Jiang, Kyle
Camsari, Kerem Y.
author_facet Callahan-Coray, Kevin
Lee, Kyle
Jiang, Kyle
Camsari, Kerem Y.
contents Ising machines and related probabilistic hardware have emerged as promising platforms for NP-hard optimization and sampling. However, many practical problems involve constraints that induce dense or all-to-all couplings, undermining scalability and hardware efficiency. We address this constraint-induced density through two complementary approaches. First, we introduce a hardware-aware native formulation for multi-state probabilistic digits (p-dits) that avoids the locally dense intra-variable couplings required by binary Ising encodings. We validate p-dit dynamics by reproducing known critical behavior of the 2D Potts model. Second, we propose mean-field constraints (MFC), a hybrid scheme that replaces dense pairwise constraint couplings with dynamically updated single-node biases. Applied to balanced graph partitioning, MFC achieves solution quality comparable to exact all-to-all constraint formulations while dramatically reducing graph density. Finally, we demonstrate the practical impact of restored sparsity through an FPGA implementation that accelerates partitioning by more than an order of magnitude over CPU probabilistic solvers and by over two orders of magnitude over a Tabu Ising baseline. Together, these results outline a pathway for scaling constrained optimization on probabilistic hardware.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_04200
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Restoring Sparsity in Potts Machines via Mean-Field Constraints
Callahan-Coray, Kevin
Lee, Kyle
Jiang, Kyle
Camsari, Kerem Y.
Statistical Mechanics
Emerging Technologies
Ising machines and related probabilistic hardware have emerged as promising platforms for NP-hard optimization and sampling. However, many practical problems involve constraints that induce dense or all-to-all couplings, undermining scalability and hardware efficiency. We address this constraint-induced density through two complementary approaches. First, we introduce a hardware-aware native formulation for multi-state probabilistic digits (p-dits) that avoids the locally dense intra-variable couplings required by binary Ising encodings. We validate p-dit dynamics by reproducing known critical behavior of the 2D Potts model. Second, we propose mean-field constraints (MFC), a hybrid scheme that replaces dense pairwise constraint couplings with dynamically updated single-node biases. Applied to balanced graph partitioning, MFC achieves solution quality comparable to exact all-to-all constraint formulations while dramatically reducing graph density. Finally, we demonstrate the practical impact of restored sparsity through an FPGA implementation that accelerates partitioning by more than an order of magnitude over CPU probabilistic solvers and by over two orders of magnitude over a Tabu Ising baseline. Together, these results outline a pathway for scaling constrained optimization on probabilistic hardware.
title Restoring Sparsity in Potts Machines via Mean-Field Constraints
topic Statistical Mechanics
Emerging Technologies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.04200