Large-scale Sustainable Search on Unconventional Computing Hardware

Abstract: Since the advent of the Internet, quantifying the relative importance of web pages is at the core of search engine methods. According to one algorithm, PageRank, the worldwide web structure is represented by the Google matrix, whose principal eigenvector components assign a numerical value to web pages for their ranking. Finding such a dominant eigenvector on an ever-growing number of web pages becomes a computationally intensive task incompatible with Moore's Law. We demonstrate that special-purpose optical machines such as networks of optical parametric oscillators, lasers, and gain-dissipative condensates, may aid in accelerating the reliable reconstruction of principal eigenvectors of real-life web graphs. We discuss the feasibility of simulating the PageRank algorithm on large Google matrices using such unconventional hardware. We offer alternative rankings based on the minimisation of spin Hamiltonians. Our estimates show that special-purpose optical machines may provide dramatic improvements in power consumption over classical computing architectures.