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International Journal of Quantum Information

D-Wave and predecessors: From simulated to quantum annealing

Eliahu Cohen, Boaz Tamir

Published Apr 1, 2014• 29 citations
Publisher

Abstract

On May 2011, D-Wave Systems Inc. announced "D-Wave One", as "the world's first commercially available quantum computer". No wonder this adiabatic quantum computer based on 128-qubit chip-set provoked an immediate controversy. Over the last 40 years, quantum computation has been a very promising yet challenging research area, facing major difficulties producing a large scale quantum computer. Today, after Google has purchased "D-Wave Two" containing 512 qubits, criticism has only increased. In this work, we examine the theory underlying the D-Wave, seeking to shed some light on this intriguing quantum computer. Starting from classical algorithms such as Metropolis algorithm, genetic algorithm (GA), hill climbing and simulated annealing, we continue to adiabatic computation and quantum annealing towards better understanding of the D-Wave mechanism. Finally, we outline some applications within the fields of information and image processing. In addition, we suggest a few related theoretical ideas and hypotheses.

DOI
10.1142/s0219749914300022

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On May 2011, D-Wave Systems Inc. announced "D-Wave One", as "the world's first commercially available quantum computer". No wonder this adiabatic quantum computer based on 128-qubit chip-set provoked an immediate controversy. Over the last 40 years, quantum computation has been a very promising yet challenging research area, facing major difficulties producing a large scale quantum computer. Today, after Google has purchased "D-Wave Two" containing 512 qubits, criticism has only increased. In this work, we examine the theory underlying the D-Wave, seeking to shed some light on this intriguing quantum computer. Starting from classical algorithms such as Metropolis algorithm, genetic algorithm (GA), hill climbing and simulated annealing, we continue to adiabatic computation and quantum annealing towards better understanding of the D-Wave mechanism. Finally, we outline some applications within the fields of information and image processing. In addition, we suggest a few related theoretical ideas and hypotheses.
Adiabatic Quantum Computing (AQC) is a relatively new subject in the world of quantum computing, let alone Physics. Inspiration for this project has come from recent controversy around D-Wave Systems in British Columbia, Canada, who claim to have built a working AQC which is now commercially available and hope to be distributing a 1024 qubit chip by the end of 2008. Their 16 qubit chip was demonstrated online for the Supercomputing 2007 conference within which a few small problems were solved; although the explanations that journalists and critics received were minimal and very little was divulged in the question and answer session. This 'unconvincing' demonstration has caused physicists and computer scientists to hit back at D-Wave. The aim of this project is to give an introduction to the historic advances in classical and quantum computing and to explore the methods of AQC. Through numerical simulations an algorithm for the Max Independent Set problem is empirically obtained.
Quantum computing has emerged as a promising computational paradigm with the potential to solve problems that are intractable for classical computers. This paper provides an overview of the current state of quantum computing, including its historical development, hardware advancements, applications, and challenges. Special attention is given to combinatorial optimization, which is considered one of the most promising application domains. The limitations of current quantum systems and future research directions are also discussed. This paper presents a comparative study between a conventional D-Wave-based simulated annealing approach and a proposed hybrid optimization model for solving largescale combinatorial optimization problems. The study focuses on benchmark problems, including AES, TSP gr24, and a real-world load balancing problem, all formulated as QUBO models. The D-Wave approach employs the dwave-neal simulated annealing engine with various parameter settings, while the proposed model introduces a decomposition-based framework combined with adaptive parameter control and iterative refinement. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model consistently outperforms the conventional approach in terms of solution quality, achieving significantly lower energy values across all problem instances. In particular, for the TSP gr24 problem, the proposed model achieves near-optimal solutions with substantially reduced computation time. For large-scale problems such as AES and load balancing, the proposed model maintains scalability and robustness, whereas the conventional approach suffers from increased computational cost and performance degradation. Although the proposed method introduces additional computational steps, its hybrid structure effectively mitigates limitations related to local minima, parameter sensitivity, and scalability. These findings indicate that integrating classical optimization techniques with quantum-inspired methods is essential for practical applications. The proposed model provides a promising framework for solving complex real-world optimization problems and highlights the importance of hybrid approaches in advancing quantum annealing technologies.
Quantum computation is a promising emerging technology, and by utilizing the principles of quantum mechanics, it is expected to achieve faster computations than classical computers for specific problems. There are two distinct architectures for quantum computation: gate-based quantum computers and quantum annealing. In gate-based quantum computation, we implement a sequence of quantum gates that manipulate qubits. This approach allows us to perform universal quantum computation, yet they pose significant experimental challenges for large-scale integration. On the other hand, with quantum annealing, the solution of the optimization problem can be obtained by preparing the ground state. Conventional quantum annealing devices with transverse-field Ising Hamiltonian, such as those manufactured by D-Wave Inc., achieving around 5000 qubits, are relatively more amenable to large-scale integration but are limited to specific computations. In this paper, we present a practical method for implementing universal quantum computation within the conventional quantum annealing architecture using the transverse-field Ising Hamiltonian. Our innovative approach relies on an adiabatic transformation of the Hamiltonian, changing from transverse fields to a ferromagnetic interaction regime, where the ground states become degenerate. Notably, our proposal is compatible with D-Wave devices, opening up possibilities for realizing large-scale gate-based quantum computers. This research bridges the gap between conventional quantum annealing and gate-based quantum computation, offering a promising path toward the development of scalable quantum computing platforms.
The paper is based on a thesis with the same title. The purpose of this thesis is to analyse D-Wave devices using quantum effects. The research focuses on demonstrating the advantages and disadvantages of a company moving away from the circuit model in its computers. The subject of the research is the used adiabatic model of quantum computing based on the mechanism of quantum annealing. The research is based on publicly available, comprehensive documentation of D-Wave Systems. On the basis of scientific papers, conferences and information contained in websites, controversies, disadvantages and advantages of the solutions adopted have been described.
The recent availability of the first commercial quantum computers has provided a promising tool to tackle NP hard problems which can only be solved heuristically with present techniques. However, it is unclear if the current state of quantum computing already provides a quantum advantage over the current state of the art in classical computing. This article assesses the performance of the D-Wave 2X quantum annealer on two NP hard graph problems, in particular clique finding and graph partitioning. For this, we provide formulations as Qubo and Ising Hamiltonians suitable for the quantum annealer and compare a variety of quantum solvers (Sapi, QBSolv, QSage provided by D-Wave Sys, Inc.) to current classical algorithms (METIS, Simulated Annealing, third-party clique finding and graph splitting heuristics) on certain test sets of graphs. We demonstrate that for small graph instances, classical methods still outperform the quantum annealer in terms of computing time, even though the quality of the best solutions obtained is comparable. Nevertheless, due to the limited problem size which can be embedded on the D-Wave 2X chip, the aforementioned finding applies to most of problems of general nature solvable on the quantum annealer. For instances specifically designed to fit the D-Wave 2X architecture, we observe substantial speed-ups in computing time over classical approaches.
Abstract Quantum computing is no longer a nascent field. Programmable quantum annealing (QA) devices with more than 1000 qubits are commercially available. How does one know that a putative QA device is indeed quantum? How should one go about benchmarking its performance and compare it to classical algorithms? How can its performance be improved by error correction? In this contribution to the focus collection on ‘What would you do with 1000 qubits?’, we review the work we and others have done in this area, since the first D-Wave quantum annealer with 108 qubits was made available to us. Some of the lessons we have learned will be useful when other quantum computing platforms reach a similar scale, and practitioners will attempt to demonstrate quantum speedup.