Beyond Classical
New landmark peer-reviewed paper published in Science, “Beyond-Classical Computation in Quantum Simulation,” unequivocally validates D-Wave achievement of the world’s first and only demonstration of quantum computational supremacy on a useful problem with relevance to materials discovery
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Realizing an Industry-First Quantum Computing Milestone
Our scientific breakthrough published in the esteemed journal Science, confirms that our annealing quantum computer outperformed one of the world’s most powerful classical supercomputers in solving a complex magnetic materials simulation problem with relevance to materials discovery. The research shows D-Wave annealing quantum computer performs magnetic materials simulation in minutes that would take nearly one million years and more than the world’s annual electricity consumption to solve using classical supercomputers built with GPU clusters.
First to Demonstrate Quantum Supremacy on Useful, Real-World Problem
Materials discovery is a computationally complex, energy-intensive and expensive task. Today’s supercomputers and high-performance computing (HPC) centers, which are built with tens of thousands of GPUs, do not always have the computational processing power to conduct complex materials simulations in a timely or energy-efficient manner. For decades, scientists have theorized and aspired to build a quantum computer capable of solving complex materials simulation problems beyond the reach of classical computers.
D-Wave's advancements in quantum hardware have made it possible for its annealing quantum computers to process these types of problems for the first time.
The Challenge
An international collaboration of scientists led by D-Wave set out to answer the following: Can quantum beat classical in performing simulations of quantum dynamics in programmable spin glasses across multiple lattices, different evolution times and computation of a multiplicity of important properties—a computationally hard magnetic materials simulation problem with known applications to business and science?
The Compute
The simulations were run on both
D-Wave’s Advantage2 prototype annealing quantum computer and the Frontier supercomputer at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is built with graphics processing unit (GPU) clusters.
The Result
D-Wave’s annealing quantum computer performed calculations beyond the reach of one of the world’s most powerful classical supercomputers demonstrating quantum computational supremacy on a useful magnetic materials simulation.
Behind the Achievement
"Our achievement shows, without question, that D-Wave’s annealing quantum computers are now capable of solving useful problems beyond the reach of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. We are thrilled that D-Wave customers can use this technology today to realize tangible value from annealing quantum computers."
Dr. Alan Baratz, CEO of D-Wave
"This is a significant milestone made possible through over 25 years of research and hardware development at D-Wave, two years of collaboration across 11 institutions worldwide, and more than 100,000 GPU hours of simulation on two of the world’s fastest supercomputers. Besides realizing Richard Feynman's vision of simulating nature on a quantum computer, this research could open new frontiers for scientific discovery and quantum application development."
Dr. Mohammad Amin, chief scientist at D-Wave
"This work is an important step toward sharpening that understanding, with clear evidence of where our quantum computer was able to outperform classical methods. We believe that the ability to recreate the entire suite of results we produced is not possible classically. We encourage our peers in academia to continue efforts to further define the line between quantum and classical capabilities, and we believe these efforts will help drive the development of ever more powerful quantum computing technology."
Dr. Trevor Lanting, Chief Development Officer at D-Wave
Advantage2 Prototype
The Advantage2 prototype used to achieve quantum computational supremacy is accessible now to customers via D-Wave’s Leap™ real-time quantum cloud service. The prototype provides substantial performance improvements from previous-generation Advantage systems, including increased qubit coherence, connectivity, and energy scale, which enables higher-quality solutions to larger, more complex problems.
Advantage2 Prototype
The Advantage2 prototype used to achieve quantum computational supremacy is accessible now to customers via D-Wave’s Leap™ real-time quantum cloud service. The prototype provides substantial performance improvements from previous-generation Advantage systems, including increased qubit coherence, connectivity, and energy scale, which enables higher-quality solutions to larger, more complex problems.
Industry Response
“This paper marks a significant milestone in demonstrating the real-world applicability of large-scale quantum computing. Through rigorous benchmarking of quantum annealers against state-of-the-art classical methods, it convincingly establishes a quantum advantage in tackling practical problems, revealing the transformative potential of quantum computing at an unprecedented scale.”
Dr. Hidetoshi Nishimori, Professor, Department of Physics, Tokyo Institute of Technology
“Although large-scale, fully error corrected quantum computers are years in the future, quantum annealers can probe the features of quantum systems today. In an elegant paper, the D-Wave group has used a large-scale quantum annealer to uncover patterns of entanglement in a complex quantum system that lie far beyond the reach of the most powerful classical computer. The D-Wave result shows the promise of quantum annealers for exploring exotic quantum effects in a wide variety of systems.”
Dr. Seth Lloyd, Professor of Quantum Mechanical Engineering, MIT
“ORNL seeks to expand the frontiers of computation through many different avenues, and benchmarking quantum computing for materials science applications provides critical input to our understanding of new computational capabilities.”
Dr. Travis Humble, Director of Quantum Science Center, Distinguished Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory
“I believe these results mark a critical scientific milestone for D-Wave. They also serve as an invitation to the scientific community, as these results offer a strong benchmark and motivation for developing novel simulation techniques for out-of-equilibrium dynamics in quantum many-body physics. Furthermore, I hope these findings encourage theoretical exploration of the computational challenges involved in performing such simulations, both classically and quantum-mechanically.”
Dr. Juan Carrasquilla, Associate Professor at the Department of Physics, ETH Zürich
“This paper is not only a tour-de-force for experimental physics; it is also remarkable for the clarity of the results. The authors have addressed a problem that is regarded both as important and as very challenging to a classical computer. The team has shown that their quantum annealer performs better at this task than the state-of-the-art methods for classical simulation.”
Dr. Victor Martin-Mayor, Professor of Theoretical Physics, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
“Our work shows the impracticability of state-of-the-art classical simulations to simulate the dynamics of quantum magnets, opening the door for quantum technologies based on analog simulators to solve scientific questions that may otherwise remain unanswered using conventional computers.”
Dr. Alberto Nocera, Senior Staff Scientist, The University of British Columbia
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