Firstly, the superior performance and industrial application prospects of non-rotationally symmetric (NRS) optical surfaces are detailed. Secondly, those high precision machining processes to generate NRS optical surfaces are overviewed, it’s been stressed that fast tool servo (FTS) based diamond turning has been the most promising, cost-effective, and high precision machining process to generate NRS surfaces. Finally, the recent research progress in FTS based diamond turning of NRS optical surfaces is remarked, both the tool trajectory generation and the FTS actuation techniques are discussed, the limitations of the existing researches are disclosed, and then the academic and technological researches to be urgently carried out are suggested.