Establishing the quantum supremacy frontier with a 281 Pflop/s simulation

Noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computers are entering an era in which they can perform computational tasks beyond the capabilities of the most powerful classical computers, thereby achieving 'quantum supremacy', a major milestone in quantum computing. NISQ supremacy requires compa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Quantum science and technology 2020-07, Vol.5 (3), p.34003
Main Authors: Villalonga, Benjamin, Lyakh, Dmitry, Boixo, Sergio, Neven, Hartmut, Humble, Travis S, Biswas, Rupak, Rieffel, Eleanor G, Ho, Alan, Mandrà, Salvatore
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
HPC
MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING
quantum circuits
quantum simulation
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Summary:Noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computers are entering an era in which they can perform computational tasks beyond the capabilities of the most powerful classical computers, thereby achieving 'quantum supremacy', a major milestone in quantum computing. NISQ supremacy requires comparison with a state-of-the-art classical simulator. We report HPC simulations of hard random quantum circuits (RQC), which have been recently used as a benchmark for the first experimental demonstration of quantum supremacy, sustaining an average performance of 281 Pflop/s (true single precision) on Summit, currently the fastest supercomputer in the world. These simulations were carried out using qFlex, a tensor-network-based classical high-performance simulator of RQCs. Our results show an advantage of many orders of magnitude in energy consumption of NISQ devices over classical supercomputers. In addition, we propose a standard benchmark for NISQ computers based on qFlex.
ISSN:2058-9565
2058-9565
DOI:10.1088/2058-9565/ab7eeb