Corentin Delacour
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara
Builder The claim is about what the hardware does, and the philosophy is left open
Corentin Delacour is a researcher in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, working in Kerem Y. Camsari’s probabilistic computing group. His background spans sub-threshold CMOS oscillator networks, energy-based physics hardware, and variational Monte Carlo algorithms for stochastic circuits.
In Probabilistic Algorithms for Ising Machines from Optimization to Generative AI (arXiv:2610.03972 and Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering), Delacour, Xiuqi Zhang, Abdelrahman S. Abdelrahman, Saleh Bunaiyan, Kyle Lee, Shuvro Chowdhury, and Kerem Y. Camsari synthesize the algorithmic stack for programmable Ising machines. A central contribution of their work is the Probabilistic Approximate Optimization Algorithm (PAOA), a classical variational framework that trains time-dependent coupling and inverse-temperature schedules directly on networks of probabilistic bits (p-bits), alongside parallel tempering and cluster mean-field methods.
Delacour is classified as a Builder on this site. His work provides the hardware-software co-design rules that let physical thermal noise execute variational inference and Boltzmann sampling at scale, without claiming that p-bit circuits possess subjective awareness.
Known for. Probabilistic Approximate Optimization Algorithm (PAOA), Ising machine algorithms, coupled oscillator and p-bit circuit design
Coverage on this site
- Kerem Camsari and Corentin Delacour Map Probabilistic Algorithms and PAOA for Ising Machines November 2026
Related researchers
- Kerem CamsariDepartment of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa BarbaraThe p-bit, a binary unit that fluctuates at random under the control of its inputs, and probabilistic computers built from p-bits on FPGAs, including a networked machine with one million p-bits (arXiv 2606.25313, 2026)
- Navid Anjum AaditDepartment of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University (present address); previously University of California, Santa BarbaraFirst author of the sparse Ising machine on FPGAs (Nature Electronics, 2022) and of the programmable probabilistic computer with one million p-bits (arXiv 2606.25313, 2026)
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Corentin Delacour is listed with the other builders, who hold that the claim is about what the hardware does, and the philosophy is left open. The positions themselves are set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.