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CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260915T200535Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20141104T140129Z
DTSTART:20141111T203000Z
DTEND:20141111T213000Z
UID:event1326@bu.edu
URL:http://physics.bu.edu/internal/events/show/1326
SUMMARY: Seeking Quantum Speedup Through Spin Glasses:     The Good\, the B
	ad\, and the Ugly
DESCRIPTION:Featuring Helmut G. Katzgraber\, Department of Physics & Astron
	omy\, Texas A&M University\nHosted by: David Campbell\nPoster: http://physi
	cs.bu.edu/internal//files/get/111114-katzgraber.pdf\n\nPart of the Physics 
	Department Colloquia Series.\n\nCan quantum computers indeed meet the promi
	se of doing complex\ncalculations faster than classical computers based on 
	transistor\ntechnologies? While the holy grail of a programmable universal 
	quantum\ncomputer will probably still take decades to reach\, one can alrea
	dy\nbegin to answer this question by testing programmable quantum annealing
	\nmachines that are currently being built. These machines\, such as D-Wave\
	n2\, use a non-mainstream method known as adiabatic quantum annealing to\np
	erform optimization tasks. Very recently\, tests performed by different\nre
	search teams on the D-Wave 2 machine using spin glasses as a benchmark\nhav
	e shown that\, although the machine indeed appears to tap into quantum\neff
	ects\, it shows no speedup over traditional computing architectures.\nHere\
	, I present reasons why this might be the case: The benchmarks used\nto tes
	t the D-Wave machine are encoded in the restrictive Chimera\ntopology dicta
	ted by fabrication constraints of the device. Our finding\nis that\, for th
	e standard benchmark Ising spin glass on the Chimera\nlattice\, its energy 
	landscape is actually rather simple. This means that\nsearching for a groun
	d state of an Ising spin glass on the Chimera\nlattice is an easier exercis
	e in optimization for both quantum\, as well\nas vanilla classical optimiza
	tion methods\, i.e.\, not a measure of\nsufficient rigor to detect quantum 
	speedup. Our results thus show that a\ncareful design of the hardware archi
	tecture and benchmark problems is\nkey when building quantum annealing mach
	ines and we present alternative\nbenchmark strategies in the quest for dete
	cting quantum speedup.\n\nWork done in collaboration with R. Andrist\, F. H
	amze\, A. Ochoa and Z. Zhu.
LOCATION:SCI 109\, 590 Commonwealth Avenue\, 02215
STATUS:CONFIRMED
CLASS:PUBLIC
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