QAOA for Max-Cut requires hundreds of qubits for quantum speed-up

Guerreschi, Gian Giacomo; Matsuura, A. Y.

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-43176-9

Title: QAOA for Max-Cut requires hundreds of qubits for quantum speed-up

Journal Article · 06 May 2019 · Scientific Reports

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-43176-9 · OSTI ID:1527339

^[1]; Matsuura, A. Y. ^[1]

Intel Corp., Santa Clara, CA (United States)

Computational quantum technologies are entering a new phase in which noisy intermediate-scale quantum computers are available, but are still too small to benefit from active error correction. Even with a finite coherence budget to invest in quantum information processing, noisy devices with about 50 qubits are expected to experimentally demonstrate quantum supremacy in the next few years. Defined in terms of artificial tasks, current proposals for quantum supremacy, even if successful, will not help to facilitate solutions to practical problems. In contrast, we believe that future users of quantum computers are interested in actual applications and that noisy quantum devices may still provide value by approximately solving hard combinatorial problems via hybrid classical-quantum algorithms. To lower bound the size of quantum computers with practical utility, we perform realistic simulations of the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm and conclude that quantum speedup will not be attainable, at least for a representative combinatorial problem, until several hundreds of qubits are available.

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Research Organization:: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Scientific User Facilities Division

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231

OSTI ID:: 1527339

Journal Information:: Scientific Reports, Vol. 9, Issue 1; ISSN 2045-2322

Publisher:: Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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