INFORMATION PROCESSING APPARATUS AND INFORMATION PROCESSING METHOD

An information processing unit and information processing method capable of performing a ground-state search of an Ising model having coefficients of arbitrary values regardless of restrictions on hardware or software is suggested.When a ground state of an original problem, which is an Ising model, or an approximate solution of that ground state is calculated as a solution of the original problem, one or more sub-problems which are Ising models are generated from the original problem and the information processing unit searches the ground state of each generated sub-problem and generates a solution of the original problem based on a solution of each sub-problem obtained from the search; and when types of coefficient values of an Ising model whose ground state can be searched are limited, sub-problems which are Ising models composed of the types of limited values of coefficients are generated.