Parallel mechanical computing: Metamaterials that can multitask

Decades after being replaced with digital platforms, analogue computing has experienced a surging interest following developments in metamaterials and intricate fabrication techniques. Specifically, wave-based analogue computers which impart spatial transformations on an incident wavefront, commensurate with a desired mathematical operation, have gained traction owing to their ability to directly encode the input in its unprocessed form, bypassing analogue-to-digital conversion. While promising, these systems are inherently limited to single-task configurations. Their inability to concurrently perform multiple tasks, or compute in parallel, represents a major hindrance to advancing conceptual mechanical devices with broader computational capabilities. In here, we present a pathway to simultaneously process independent computational tasks within the same architected structure. By breaking time invariance in a set of metasurface building blocks, multiple frequency-shifted beams are self-generated which absorb notable energy amounts from the fundamental signal. The onset of these tunable harmonics enables distinct computational tasks to be assigned to different independent “channels,” effectively allowing an analogue mechanical computer to multitask.