A new study published in Science confirms quantum computing “supremacy” over classical computing, says the CEO of Vancouver quantum computer company D-Wave Quantum Inc. (NYSE:QBTS).
“We have shown quantum supremacy on complex materials simulation problems – full stop,” D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz said in a virtual press conference Wednesday.
Quantum computing has long held the promise of being able to perform feats of computation beyond the realm of classical computing.
While classical computers are confined to linear computations, quantum computing is more non-linear, and able to explore multiple possibilities simultaneously, allowing it to do certain computational tasks, like optimization, that would take classical computers much more time and energy to complete.
But proving quantum computing actually works in real-world applications can be difficult. Validating quantum computing requires testing it in real world applications against classical computers.
In a new peer-reviewed study in Science, physicists from D-Wave, the University of British Columbia, University of Waterloo, and Jagiellonian University in Poland conclude that the branch of quantum computing that D-Wave specializes in – annealing – can accomplish computations that classical computing may never be able to do.
“Although it is no longer controversial to say that near-term QPUs can solve some problems far faster than the best classical methods, this has not yet been firmly established for problems of practical interest,” the paper, Beyond classical computation in quantum simulation, notes.
The quantum annealing that D-Wave specializes in is designed to solve optimization problems, which involves evaluating multiple possible outcomes and probabilities at once. Real-world applications include logistics and finance.
For the experiment, scientists conducted simulations for magnetic materials using D-Wave’s Advantage2 annealing quantum computer and the Frontier supercomputer at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
“We show that several leading approximate methods based on tensor networks and neural networks cannot achieve the same accuracy as the quantum annealer within a reasonable timeframe,” the paper concludes. “Thus quantum annealers can answer questions of practical importance that may remain out of reach for classical computation.”
In a press release, D-Wave said the paper “unequivocally validates D-Wave’s achievement of the world’s first and only demonstration of quantum computational supremacy on a useful, real-world problem.”
“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 a classical supercomputer built with GPU clusters,” D-Wave said in its release.
“For decades, the theory of quantum computing has promised large speedups over classical algorithms for select tasks,” the Science paper notes. “Only in the last few years has this come to fruition, with a growing variety of quantum processing units (QPUs) performing computations faster than sophisticated classical approaches.
“As these processors expand in size and precision, their capacity to tackle complex computations promises to grow beyond the reach of any existing classical computer.”
D-Wave’s stock was up by about nine per cent today, though it’s hard to say if today’s publication was the prime mover. D-Wave’s stock, like many other tech stocks, has been subject to volatility in recent months.
As BIV has recently reported, shares in D-Wave closed out October 2024 trading at US$1.06 per share, and two months later ended the year trading close to eight times higher, at US$8.40.
Other quantum-computing companies, such as IonQ Inc., Quantum Computing Inc. and Rigetti Computing Inc. saw similar parabolic share-price surges at the end of 2024. All of those companies have seen share prices fall more than 38 per cent year-to-date.
D-Wave's stock price closed today at US$5.89, up nine per cent from the closing price on Tuesday.
- With files from Glen Korstrom
