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A newfangled quantum computing benchmark has revealed the military capability and weaknesses of severalquantum processing units(QPUs ) .

The benchmarking tests , lead by a team at the Jülich Research Centre in Germany , liken 19 different QPUs from five suppliers – admit IBM , Quantinuum , IonQ , Rigetti and IQM – to make up one’s mind which chips were more stable and authentic for high - performance computing ( HPC ) .

Digital abstract CPU.

These quantum system were screen both at different " breadth " ( the total telephone number ofqubits ) as well as different " depths " for 2 - qubit gates . The gates are operations that behave on twoentangledqubits simultaneously , and deepness measures the duration of a racing circuit – in other words , its complexity and performance time .

IBM ’s QPUs register the greatest strength in terms of depth , while Quantinuum performed best in the width class ( where larger numbers of qubits were tested ) . The QPUs from IBM also showed important improvement in performance across iterations , particularly between the earlierEagle and more late Heron chip propagation .

These results , outlined in a study uploaded Feb. 10 to the preprintarXivdatabase , hint that the performance improvements can be attributed not only to better and more efficient computer hardware , but also improvements in firmware and the consolidation of fractional gates — usage gates available on Heron can reduce the complexity of a circuit .

quantum chip.

However , the late reading of the Heron chip , dubbed IBM Marrakesh , did not demonstrate expected carrying into action improvement , despite having half the errors per superimposed gate ( EPLG ) compared to the computing colossus ’s previous QPU , IBM Fez .

Beyond classical computing

low company have made relatively big gain , too . significantly , one Quantinuum poker chip passed the benchmark at a width of 56 - qubits . This is important because it represents the power of a quantum computing system of rules to outgo exist classical computers in specific context of use .

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" In the case of Quantinuum H2 - 1 , the experiments of 50 and 56 qubits are already above the capabilities of precise model in HPC systems and the results are still meaningful , " the researchers wrote in their preprint study .

Tower of device made of copper discs connected by glowing wires and vacuum tubes. Illustration of the concept of quantum computer and computing

Specifically , the Quantinuum H2 - 1 chip produced resultant at 56 qubits , running three layers of the Linear Ramp Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm ( LR - QAOA ) — a benchmarking algorithm — imply 4,620 two - qubit gates .

" To the best of our noesis , this is the largest implementation of QAOA to solve an FC combinatorial optimization problem on literal quantum hardware that is certify to give a better result over random guessing , " the scientists said in the sketch .

IBM ’s Fez managed problem at the high deepness of the systems test . In a run that include a 100 - qubit problem using up to 10,000 layers of LR - QAOA ( nearly a million two - qubit logic gate ) Fez retained some coherent information until nearly the 300 - layer scrape . The downhearted do QPU in testing was the Ankaa-2 from Rigetti .

AWS Ocelot quantum processing unit

The squad developed the benchmark to measure out a QPU ’s potency to perform practical applications . With that in mind , they sought to excogitate a examination with a clear , consistent hardening of rules . This exam had to be well-off to go , platform agnostic ( so it could work the across-the-board possible range of quantum systems ) and ply meaningful metric unit associated with operation .

Their bench mark is build around a trial called the MaxCut problem . It presents a graphical record with several apex ( nodes ) and edges ( connector ) then asks the system to divide the nodes into two sets so that the bit of boundary between the two subset is maximum .

This is useful as a bench mark because it is computationally very unmanageable , and the difficulty can be scaled up by increasing the size of the graph , the scientist articulate in the composition .

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Futuristic CPU design elements on black background. Six items set.

A system was considered to have failed the test when the results get hold of a fully assorted state — when they were indistinguishable from those of a random sampler .

Because the bench mark relies on a examination protocol that ’s relatively simple and scalable , and can produce meaningful results with a pocket-size sample distribution set , it ’s moderately cheap to run , the computer scientists added .

The new benchmark is not without its flaws . Performance is dependent , for instance , on situate schedule parameter , intend that parameters are set beforehand and not dynamically adjust during the computation , meaning they ca n’t be optimised . The scientists suggest that alongside their own test , " dissimilar candidate benchmark to capture substantive view of execution should be propose , and the dear of them with the most denotative set of rules and utility will remain . "

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