Does Quantum Annealing Really Work? Learn how GPUs Provided the Answer
, Director of Technology, National Research Council of Italy
Quantum annealing promises to solve combinatorial optimization problems better than any classical computer, but as a matter of fact, nobody knows if it might really work. Theory shows that an answer can be obtained by looking at the behavior of an Ising Quantum Spin Glass (IQSG), which is a paradigmatic example of a seemingly simple, but actually very complex, system strongly affected by quantum effects. However, the numerical study of an IQSG is a formidable computational challenge that we solved by using about 8 million hours of GPU running highly tuned codes for Monte Carlo simulations and Exact Diagonalization of the IQSG Transfer Matrix. Learn how we combined up to four levels of parallelism, exceeding the performance of special-purpose hardware for Montecarlo simulations, and how our techniques solve eigenvalues problems of unprecedented size following an approach that can be applied to other situations where there is a matrix having billions of rows.