Analysis printed earlier this month within the science journal Nature used NVIDIA-powered supercomputers to validate a pathway towards the commercialization of quantum computing.
The analysis, led by Nobel laureate Giorgio Parisi, focuses on quantum annealing, a way which will sooner or later sort out complicated optimization issues which can be terribly difficult to standard computer systems.
To conduct their analysis, the workforce utilized 2 million GPU computing hours on the Leonardo facility (Cineca, in Bologna, Italy), almost 160,000 GPU computing hours on the Meluxina-GPU cluster, in Luxembourg, and 10,000 GPU hours from the Spanish Supercomputing Community. Moreover, they accessed the Dariah cluster, in Lecce, Italy.
They used these state-of-the-art sources to simulate the conduct of a sure sort of quantum computing system often known as a quantum annealer.
Quantum computer systems basically rethink how data is computed to allow solely new options.
Not like classical computer systems, which course of data in binary — 0s and 1s — quantum computer systems use quantum bits or qubits that may enable data to be processed in solely new methods.
Quantum annealers are a particular sort of quantum laptop that, although not universally helpful, could have benefits for fixing sure kinds of optimization issues.
The paper, “The Quantum Transition of the Two-Dimensional Ising Spin Glass,” represents a big step in understanding the part transition — a change within the properties of a quantum system — of Ising spin glass, a disordered magnetic materials in a two-dimensional airplane, a crucial downside in computational physics.
The paper addresses the issue of how the properties of magnetic particles organized in a two-dimensional airplane can abruptly change their conduct.
The research additionally exhibits how GPU-powered programs play a key function in creating approaches to quantum computing.
GPU-accelerated simulations enable researchers to grasp the complicated programs’ conduct in creating quantum computer systems, illuminating essentially the most promising paths ahead.
Quantum annealers, just like the programs developed by the pioneering quantum computing firm D-Wave, function by methodically lowering a magnetic area that’s utilized to a set of magnetically prone particles.
When sturdy sufficient, the utilized area will act to align the magnetic orientation of the particles — much like how iron filings will uniformly stand to consideration close to a bar magnet.
If the energy of the sphere is various slowly sufficient, the magnetic particles will organize themselves to attenuate the vitality of the ultimate association.
Discovering this steady, minimum-energy state is essential in a very complicated and disordered magnetic system often known as a spin glass since quantum annealers can encode sure sorts of issues into the spin glass’s minimum-energy configuration.
Discovering the steady association of the spin glass then solves the issue.
Understanding these programs helps scientists develop higher algorithms for fixing troublesome issues by mimicking how nature offers with complexity and dysfunction.
That’s essential for advancing quantum annealing and its purposes in fixing extraordinarily troublesome computational issues that at present haven’t any identified environment friendly answer — issues which can be pervasive in fields starting from logistics to cryptography.
Not like gate-model quantum computer systems, which function by making use of a sequence of quantum gates, quantum annealers enable a quantum system to evolve freely in time.
This isn’t a common laptop — a tool able to performing any computation given adequate time and sources — however could have benefits for fixing specific units of optimization issues in utility areas reminiscent of car routing, portfolio optimization and protein folding.
By means of in depth simulations carried out on NVIDIA GPUs, the researchers discovered how key parameters of the spin glasses making up quantum annealers change throughout their operation, permitting a greater understanding of methods to use these programs to attain a quantum speedup on necessary issues.
A lot of the work for this groundbreaking paper was first introduced at NVIDIA’s GTC 2024 expertise convention. Learn the total paper and be taught extra about NVIDIA’s work in quantum computing.