Recent Progress in NASA's Quantum Computing Research Project

Overview

NASA's quantum computing project is a long-term research activity to assess the potential of quantum computers to perform computations that are difficult or impossible for conventional supercomputers to perform in a realistic timeframe. The project is an innovative collaboration among teams at NASA, Google, and the Universities Space Research Association (USRA).

Project Details

NASA researchers are using a D-Wave 2X system to investigate how quantum computing and quantum algorithms may dramatically improve the agency's ability to solve difficult computational challenges in aeronautics, Earth and space sciences, and space exploration. The hardware performs quantum annealing, an optimization process that takes advantage of quantum effects such as superposition and tunneling. The 1,097-qubit system—currently the largest quantum annealer in the world—is operated at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility's Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (QuAIL) at NASA's Ames Research Center.

Our current efforts focus on quantum approaches to optimization problems for applications such as air traffic control; mission planning and scheduling; machine autonomy; fault diagnosis; and robust system design.

Results and Impact

The QuAIL team is exploring several applications to understand which areas may benefit most from quantum annealing technologies, and developing appropriate strategies, algorithms, and advanced programming techniques. Key outcomes from our preliminary research studies conducted from 2013–2015 include:

• Performance benchmarks for near-term quantum annealers for optimization problems in planning, scheduling, fault diagnostics, graph analysis, transportation and communication networks, and machine learning.
• Best practices for programming a quantum annealer and compiling problems.
• Novel hardware characterization and calibration techniques that increase performance by an order of magnitude or more, by addressing imprecise specifications in computational problems.
• Case studies to validate that quantum annealing effects (such as tunneling) result in improved solution accuracy, as compared to classical annealing—in a real-world quantum annealer subject to noisy conditions.

Why HPC Matters

NASA is exploring the potential of operating quantum systems as special-purpose processors with capabilities that complement the Pleiades supercomputer located at the NAS facility. We are excited about the possibility of tackling the hardest computational problems more efficiently through this integration.

What's Next

Our researchers are sharing their design insights and hardware characterization results with teams around the world who are building quantum hardware and developing quantum algorithms. Such collaboration among the science community may bring about leaps in quantum computing technologies to vastly improve performance on a wide range of tasks, leading to new discoveries and technologies, and significantly changing the way we solve challenging real-world problems.