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Friday, May 14, 2021

Toshiba Simulations Beat Quantum Computing

Toshiba work of interest.  Linking to Microsoft Cloud.  Would you expect a simulation to beat out an actual implementation?  Depends.  But a simulation usually means it does not include all the physical constraints involved.  Note the mention of 'combinatorial' problems ....that is problems that have very large numbers of possible solutions, exactly what we posed very early on.

Commissioned by CACM Staff

Why wait for quantum computers to be perfected "someday," when you can use Toshiba's quasi-quantum optimization algorithm on Microsoft's Azure cloud in 2021? It outperforms today's fledgling quantum computer speeds through the use of that proprietary algorithm on conventional digital computers accelerated with cloud GPUs [graphic processing units].

Alternatively, the quasi-quantum algorithms can run on Toshiba's FPGA [field programmable gate array].

"It will take a very long time for quantum computers to achieve the high performance of our [GPU and FPGA-powered] optimization solutions for large-size problems," said Hayato Goto, chief research Scientist at Toshiba Corp. in Japan. In fact, Goto said, "So far, no one has even been able to prove that any future quantum computer will be able to solve combinatorial optimization problems faster, which leaves room for our classical machines to surpass quantum computers."

Too good to be true? Toshiba recently demonstrated a discrete version of its quasi-quantum algorithm in peer-reviewed benchmarks against a wide variety of current-day quantum computer hardware and quasi-quantum software simulators, and outperformed them all.... " 

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