Analysis revealed 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 technique which will at some point sort out complicated optimization issues which might be terribly difficult to standard computer systems.
To conduct their analysis, the staff 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 assets to simulate the habits of a sure type of quantum computing system often called a quantum annealer.
Quantum computer systems essentially rethink how info is computed to allow totally new options.
In contrast to classical computer systems, which course of info in binary — 0s and 1s — quantum computer systems use quantum bits or qubits that may enable info to be processed in totally new methods.
Quantum annealers are a particular sort of quantum pc that, although not universally helpful, could have benefits for fixing sure sorts 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 aircraft, a crucial downside in computational physics.
The paper addresses the issue of how the properties of magnetic particles organized in a two-dimensional aircraft can abruptly change their habits.
The examine additionally exhibits how GPU-powered methods play a key function in creating approaches to quantum computing.
GPU-accelerated simulations enable researchers to know the complicated methods’ habits in creating quantum computer systems, illuminating probably the most promising paths ahead.
Quantum annealers, just like the methods 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 power of the sphere is different slowly sufficient, the magnetic particles will organize themselves to reduce the vitality of the ultimate association.
Discovering this steady, minimum-energy state is essential in a very complicated and disordered magnetic system often called 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 methods 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 functions in fixing extraordinarily troublesome computational issues that presently haven’t any identified environment friendly answer — issues which might be pervasive in fields starting from logistics to cryptography.
In contrast to 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 pc — a tool able to performing any computation given ample time and assets — however could have benefits for fixing specific units of optimization issues in utility areas corresponding to automobile routing, portfolio optimization and protein folding.
By way of intensive simulations carried out on NVIDIA GPUs, the researchers realized how key parameters of the spin glasses making up quantum annealers change throughout their operation, permitting a greater understanding of the best way to use these methods 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 complete paper and study extra about NVIDIA’s work in quantum computing.
