AQUA@home: Difference between revisions
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D-Wave Systems built AQUA@home to support the development of its experimental superconducting [[wikipedia:adiabatic quantum computation|adiabatic quantum optimization]] processors. Before committing hardware resources to a given class of problem, D-Wave researchers wanted to estimate in advance how a quantum annealing processor of a given size and connectivity could be expected to perform.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2008/12/dwave-quantum-computer-performance.html |title=Dwave Quantum Computer Performance Estimates and Calculations |website=NextBigFuture.com |date=2008-12-07 |access-date=2026-06-27}}</ref> Simulating the relevant quantum-mechanical spin systems classically using [[wikipedia:Quantum Monte Carlo|Quantum Monte Carlo]] (QMC) methods is computationally demanding, which made the problem well suited to distributed volunteer computing.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2008/12/dwave-quantum-computer-performance.html |title=Dwave Quantum Computer Performance Estimates and Calculations |website=NextBigFuture.com |date=2008-12-07 |access-date=2026-06-27}}</ref> | D-Wave Systems built AQUA@home to support the development of its experimental superconducting [[wikipedia:adiabatic quantum computation|adiabatic quantum optimization]] processors. Before committing hardware resources to a given class of problem, D-Wave researchers wanted to estimate in advance how a quantum annealing processor of a given size and connectivity could be expected to perform.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2008/12/dwave-quantum-computer-performance.html |title=Dwave Quantum Computer Performance Estimates and Calculations |website=NextBigFuture.com |date=2008-12-07 |access-date=2026-06-27}}</ref> Simulating the relevant quantum-mechanical spin systems classically using [[wikipedia:Quantum Monte Carlo|Quantum Monte Carlo]] (QMC) methods is computationally demanding, which made the problem well suited to distributed volunteer computing.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2008/12/dwave-quantum-computer-performance.html |title=Dwave Quantum Computer Performance Estimates and Calculations |website=NextBigFuture.com |date=2008-12-07 |access-date=2026-06-27}}</ref> | ||
The earliest computations run on AQUA@home calculated expected runtimes for [[wikipedia:spin glass|spin glass]] problems, a class of [[wikipedia:NP-hardness|NP-hard]] [[combinatorial optimization]] problem well suited to the project's processor architecture; this work formed the basis of the project's first publications.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2008/12/dwave-quantum-computer-performance.html |title=Dwave Quantum Computer Performance Estimates and Calculations |website=NextBigFuture.com |date=2008-12-07 |access-date=2026-06-27}}</ref> A later phase of the project used AQUA@home to estimate the runtime of the quantum adiabatic algorithm on binary classification problems for [[machine learning]], developed in part with researchers from [[wikipedia:Google|Google]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2008/12/dwave-quantum-computer-performance.html |title=Dwave Quantum Computer Performance Estimates and Calculations |website=NextBigFuture.com |date=2008-12-07 |access-date=2026-06-27}}</ref> | The earliest computations run on AQUA@home calculated expected runtimes for [[wikipedia:spin glass|spin glass]] problems, a class of [[wikipedia:NP-hardness|NP-hard]] [[wikipedia:combinatorial optimization|combinatorial optimization]] problem well suited to the project's processor architecture; this work formed the basis of the project's first publications.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2008/12/dwave-quantum-computer-performance.html |title=Dwave Quantum Computer Performance Estimates and Calculations |website=NextBigFuture.com |date=2008-12-07 |access-date=2026-06-27}}</ref> A later phase of the project used AQUA@home to estimate the runtime of the quantum adiabatic algorithm on binary classification problems for [[wikipedia:machine learning|machine learning]], developed in part with researchers from [[wikipedia:Google|Google]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2008/12/dwave-quantum-computer-performance.html |title=Dwave Quantum Computer Performance Estimates and Calculations |website=NextBigFuture.com |date=2008-12-07 |access-date=2026-06-27}}</ref> | ||
== Software and technical milestones == | == Software and technical milestones == | ||