NIST
Race logic does indeed involve a race, but in this contest all the truck drivers initially drive in different directions. To determine which route to the final destination is fastest, they race over all possible routes through the different intermediate delivery points. In the new circuit, the NIST researchers inserted a group of time-encoded signals at the starting point, each acting as a different driver that speeds through the team’s simulated hardware circuit.
Whenever a driver arrives at one of her intermediate destination points in the race, the model system sends out new drivers (new time signals) who fan out in different directions to the remaining destinations. If a driver arrives at a destination that another driver has already been to, that driver drops out, because her path is no longer competitive. The winner of the race – the first driver to arrive at the end of the circuit – indicates the solution to the particular puzzle that the hardware was programmed