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Wave-Based Computing: Key Engineering Bottlenecks

August 19, 2026

The Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA) released the report, Wave-Based Computing: Key Engineering Bottlenecks, in March 2026. This brief report identifies six key engineering research opportunities and challenges:  

Nonlinearities.
Storage and memory (including compute‑in‑memory).
Reconfigurability and programmability.
Incoherent waves and modal diversity.
Error correction, noise and precision.
Practical and fundamental limits.

With funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation Engineering Directorate, ERVA convened experts from academia, industry and government to identify engineering opportunities to accelerate development of wave-based computing. Findings from this meeting are summarized in the report.

Access the Wave-Based Computing report.