Although quantum computers based upon the gate-based approach may get more of the publicity, we feel that one shouldn’t ignore the potential usefulness of other approaches including quantum annealing and Coherent Ising Machines (CIM) that can also take advantage of quantum mechanical phenomena to solve computational problems, particularly in the combinatorial optimization area. We recently covered a review of such activity in Japan and also reported earlier this year on a collaboration between NTT and CalTech to develop very high performance CIM machines to solve complex optimization problems. NTT Research Inc., has entered into a new agreement to perform joint research with the Tokyo Institute of Technology to investigate two specific applications for their CIM machines…