Quantinuum Trapped Ion Quantum Computer Compute World Record 100 Times Faster Than Google Sycamore

Quantum computing researchers are exploring whether quantum computational advantage might be obtainable without quantum error correction. The larger one can make a quantum computer while continuing to push down error rates the more likely it is that we will find tasks at which non-error-corrected quantum computers dramatically outperform the best classical algorithms. The high gate fidelities and arbitrary connectivity afforded by

the trapped-ion QCCD architecture have enabled RCS to be carried out in a computationally challenging regime and at completely unprecedented fidelities, leaving open considerable room to scale such demonstrations up even without further progress in reducing gate error rates. Quantinuum

is confident that H2 is by no means near the boundary of how far such demonstrations can be pushed using the QCCD architecture. For example, increasing system sizes while also reducing memory errors, circuit times, and 2Q error rates all appear achievable with current technologies by moving towards natively 2D trapping architectures, and switching to qubit ions (such as 137Ba+) that afford better SPAM fidelities than 171Yb+ and admit visible wavelength laser-based 2Q gates with more favorable error budgets. Given that RG circuits require such low depths to become hard to simulate (and a fixed fraction of qubits contribute to the worst-case hardness of simulation even as N is scaled up at constant depth), near-term scaling progress in the QCCD architecture should enable the faithful execution of quantum circuits whose simulation lies well beyond the reach

of any conceivable classical calculation.

An upgraded Quantinuum H2 trapped-ion QCCD quantum computer enabled it to operate with up to 56 qubits while maintaining arbitrary connectivity and improving upon the high two-qubit gate fidelities. As a test of the H2 quantum computer’s capabilities, they implemented RCS in randomly assigned geometries.

So what of the comparison between the H2-1 results and a classical supercomputer?

A direct comparison can be made between the time it took H2-1 to perform RCS and the time it took a classical supercomputer. However, classical simulations of RCS can be made faster by building a larger supercomputer (or by distributing the workload across many existing supercomputers). A more robust comparison is to consider the amount of energy that must be expended to perform RCS on either H2-1 or on classical computing hardware, which ultimately controls the real cost of performing RCS. An analysis based on the most efficient known classical algorithm for RCS and the power consumption of leading supercomputers indicates that H2-1 can perform RCS at 56 qubits with an estimated 30,000x reduction in power consumption. These early results should be seen as very attractive for data center owners and supercomputing facilities looking to add quantum computers as “accelerators” for their users.

Where we go next

Today’s milestone announcements are clear evidence that the H2-1 quantum processor can perform computational tasks with far greater efficiency than classical computers. They underpin the expectation that as our quantum computers scale beyond today’s 56 qubits to hundreds, thousands, and eventually millions of high-quality qubits, classical supercomputers will quickly fall behind. Quantinuum’s quantum computers are likely to become the device of choice as scrutiny continues to grow of the power consumption of classical computers applied to highly intensive workloads such as simulating molecules and material structures – tasks that are widely expected to be amenable to a speedup using quantum computers.

With this upgrade in our qubit count to 56, we will no longer be offering a commercial “fully encompassing” emulator – a mathematically exact simulation of our H2-1 quantum processor is now impossible, as it would take up the entire memory of the world’s best supercomputers. With 56 qubits, the only way to get exact results is to run on the actual hardware, a trend the leaders in this field have already embraced.

The different architectures of the H2 and the planned H3, H4 and H5 are all steps to master simpler enabling capabilities before adding new features. The H3 is a grid system which will add tighter control of the ion qubits. The H4 system will build in control lasers into the processors. This will all lead to large scale quantum processors.

They show that the combination of low depth requirements (afforded by arbitrary connectivity) together with the high gate fidelities achieved on the H2 quantum computer enable sampling from classically-challenging circuits in an unprecedented range of fidelity: Circuits deep enough to

saturate the cost of classical simulation by exact tensor network contraction (assuming no memory constraints) can be executed without a single error about 35% of the time. Historically, the most significant loophole in the claim that RCS is classically hard in practice stems from

the low circuit fidelities that have been achievable for circuits deep enough to become hard to simulate classically. The high fidelities achieved in this work appear to firmly close this loophole. Unlike previous RCS demonstrations, in which circuits have been carefully defined in reference to the most performant achievable gates, the circuits are comprised of natural perfect entanglers (equivalent to control-Z gates up to single-qubit rotations) and Haar-random single-qubit gates. All circuits are run “full stack” with the default settings that would be applied to jobs submitted by any user of H2, without any special purpose compilation or calibration. They conclude that even with 56 qubits, the computational power of H2 for RCS is strongly limited by qubit number and not fidelity or clock speed, with the implication that the separation of computational power between QCCD-based trapped-ion quantum computers and classical computers will continue to grow very rapidly as the qubit number continues to be scaled up.

The H2-series quantum computers are built around a race track-shaped surface-electrode trap.

Empirical evidence for a gap between the computational powers of classical and quantum computers has been provided by experiments that sample the output distributions of two-dimensional quantum circuits. Many attempts to close this gap have utilized classical simulations based on tensor network techniques, and their limitations shed light on the improvements to quantum hardware required to frustrate classical simulability. In particular, quantum computers having in excess of ∼ 50 qubits are primarily vulnerable to classical simulation due to restrictions on their gate fidelity and their connectivity, the latter determining how many gates are required (and therefore how much infidelity is suffered) in generating highly-entangled states. Here, we describe recent hardware upgrades to Quantinuum’s H2 quantum computer enabling it to operate on up to 56 qubits with arbitrary connectivity and 99.843(5)% two-qubit gate fidelity. Utilizing the flexible connectivity of H2, they present data from random circuit sampling in highly connected geometries, doing so at unprecedented fidelities and a scale that appears to be beyond the capabilities of state-of-the-art classical algorithms. The considerable difficulty of classically simulating H2 is likely limited only by qubit number, demonstrating the promise and scalability of the QCCD architecture as continued progress is made towards building larger machines.

Previous Quantinuum Work

Nextbigfuture interviewed the President and COO of Quantinuum, Tony Uttley, and the scientific lead, Dr Henrik Dreyer. They have used the new H2 32 Qubit quantum computer chip to engineer the waveform of a new state of matter. They have engineered something called the Non-Abelian Topological Quantum state. Topological quantum computing has been one of the major quantum computing goals for over twenty years. The reason is that topological qubits are far more resistant to noise and errors.

scientific lead, Dr Henrik Dreyer

President and COO Tony Uttley

Topological quantum qubits could be achieved with new materials OR with an engineered wave function. Quantinuum-engineered wave functions by using 27 qubits with three additional qubits for control. Think of the many qubits working together like a symphony orchestra playing notes with perfect harmony and synchronization or a choir singing perfectly together.

Novel Uses that Were Impossible Before

This work opens up exciting new fields of research within condensed matter physics, which would have been impossible using a classical computer alone.

This is hugely important. People have been asking what can quantum computers do that regular computers cannot? Regular computers can simulate qubit calculations up to about 50 qubit or so. Classical computers cannot perform superposition or entanglement but they can pretend to be quantum-like using formulas. The new Non-Abelian Topological Quantum state is where quantum qubits are behaving like condensed matter. The Topological quantum become like a new quantum physics exploration devices. They can explore condensed matter behavior in ways no other device can.

Particle accelerators are devices that speed up the particles that make up all matter in the universe and collide them together or into a target. Particle accelerators are devices made to explore physics and matter in energy regimes that are impossible for other devices. The Large Hadron Collider cost some $4.75 billion to build in 2012. Now, it’s reported that the CERN Lab in Switzerland plans to start construction on a new super-collider by 2035 at a cost of $23 billion.

How large would a topological quantum state system need to be to have the value of a large particle accelerator?

How Bad is the Noise Problem in Quantum Computers? Why is Noise Resistant SuperQubits a Big Deal?

I had a Dec, 2022 article about “what is really happening with quantum computers?” which was cited by the IEEE Quantum Journal.

Q-Ctrl had software that could remove the worst-performing qubits in a system to reduce noise by thousands of times. I looked at dozens of presentations and hundreds of slides at the 2022 Q2B (Quantum to Business conference). This is a critical slide that explains a lot about where things are at with quantum computers. You have to spend some time looking at this graph. On the X, horizontal axis, you see the qubit counts. On the Y, vertical axis, you see the probability of getting a successful answer. Below 8 qubits you are look at about 10% chance of success. At 12-13 qubits you are looking at 0.1% chance of success in getting answers. At 15 qubits there is 0.005% chance of success. Reducing noise by thousands of times lets you increase the usable qubits from about 9 to about 17.

You can get answers by controlling noise and you rapidly cannot get answers in a sea of noise.

High Qubit Quality of the Quantinuum H2 Unlocked the Topological Quantum Capability

The differentiating features and precision control of the H2 processor, the topological state (that is essentially a qubit with limited gate capacity) was created in a way where its properties could be precisely controlled in real-time, demonstrating the creation, braiding and annihilation (measurement) of non-Abelian anyons.

It required the error rates and control system precision the H2 processor to “unlock” topological state capability.

There were able to flip the non-Abelian topological qubits. There is more work needed to demonstrate universality and stabilty.

The continued improvement with lower error rates and more precise control (aka gate fidelity) could unlock more capabilities.

Quantinuum is using trapped ions. This means that they are using physical atomically precise particles for qubits.

This version of the H2 has 32 qubits. Quantinuum expects to have a 50 qubit version by 2024. They had the H2 working in November of 2022 and had the non-abelian topological qubit working on Feb 16,2023. Quantinuum chose to gather more data and prove unique capability and gather data to prove they had achieved unique capability before the announcement.

If fully connected and fully usable 50 high fidelity qubits can be achieved this could surpass classical computer quantum simulation capabilties. This is one of the reasons for Quantinuum to take extra care proving out operations at smaller scales. When modules are put together and when systems are scaled it will be far tougher to test larger quantum systems.

Using the H2 Today

Besides the headline breakthrough, the H2 has already been active in experimental studies by a range of organizations and companies, with notable results:

• Global Technology Applied Research at JPMorgan Chase has published a scholarly paper on the quantum optimization algorithm design for portfolio optimization, with numerical results successfully validated on H2 during early access.

• Quantinuum’s machine learning team demonstrated a new heuristic optimization routine that can solve optimization problems with minimal quantum resources.

Innovations in H2

The H2 features initially include 32 fully-connected, high-fidelity qubits and an all-new architecture that advances the System Model H1’s linear design (with a new ion trap whose oval shape resembles a “racetrack”). Quantinuum showcased the H2’s capability by demonstrating a 32-qubit GHZ state (a non-classical state with all 32 qubits globally entangled), the largest on record.

The unique “racetrack” design of the System Model H2 enables all-to-all connectivity between qubits, meaning that every qubit in the H2 can directly be pairwise entangled with any other qubit in the system. Near-term doing so reduces the overall errors in algorithms, and long term opens up additional opportunities for new, more efficient error correcting codes – both critical for continuing to accelerate the capabilities of quantum computing. When combined with the demonstration of controlled non-Abelian anyons, the integrated achievement highlights an important step in topological quantum information storage and processing.

Additionally, the new design is a powerful step towards showing the scaling potential of ion-trap devices. Not only is H2 a demonstration of the scaling power of ion traps in the quantum charge coupled device (QCCD) architecture: showing the ability to simultaneously scale qubit number while maintaining performance, it also contains new technologies that pave the way for further scaling in subsequent generations. Similar to the first-generation systems, H2 is designed to accommodate future upgrades over its product lifecycle, meaning that qubit number and qubit quality will both be improved upon.

The different architectures of the H2 and the planned H3, H4 and H5 are all steps to master simpler enabling capabilities before adding new features. The H3 is a grid system which will add tighter control of the ion qubits. The H4 system will build in control lasers into the processors. This will all lead to large scale quantum processors.

H2 launches with a Quantum Volume 65,536 surpassing the last record announced using H1-1 in February of this year.

The H2 is available now through cloud-based access from Quantinuum and will be available through Microsoft Azure Quantum beginning in June. Additionally, a noise-informed emulator of H2 is made possible through NVIDIA’s cuQuantum SDK of optimized libraries and tools, which help accelerate quantum computing simulation workflows.

Two Paths Forward

Quantinuum is currently unique among many quantum computing companies. They can proceed on two paths for scaling. They can use the H2 and successor chips as just high quality qubits and scale those systems.

They can use the H2 and successor chips non-Abelian super-qubits with inherently noise resistant features.

The high-fidelity qubits and improving fidelity systems will continue to unlock new capabilities such as superior error suppression and new error-correcting architectures.