Birds of a Feather Archive

Advances in Hybrid Quantum-Classical High-Performance Computing

Authors: Kristel Michielsen (Juelich Supercomputing Centre (JSC)), Dominik Ulmer (ParTec AG, Germany), Yonatan Cohen (Quantum Machines, Israel), Mathias Pütz (ParTec AG, Germany), Thomas Moschny (ParTec AG, Germany)

Abstract: The goal of this BoF session is to bring the HPC and QC communities closer together with the objective to scrutinize HPC codes and workflows for potential hybrid quantum-classical computing.

The focus will be primarily on the identification of the required tool set, including the infrastructure and of the potential applications, and less on the computation acceleration.

The format of the BoF will consist of three short impulse talks followed by a moderated panel discussion, inviting substantial contributions from the audience.

Long Description: With the demise of Dennard's scaling and the demise of Moore's law looming, there is a need for new computing paradigms to further advance high performance computing (HPC).

Quantum computing (QC) promises unprecedented possibilities for important computing tasks such as quantum simulations in chemistry and materials science or optimization and machine learning, which can considerably change science, industry, economy and our everyday life. With this potential, QC is increasingly attracting interest from industry and scientific groups that use HPC for their applications. These pilot users are primarily interested in testing whether available quantum computers today or in the foreseeable future are suitable for simulating increasingly complex systems, analyzing large data sets using machine learning methods or performing the hardest optimization task. The systems may be used as stand-alone computing devices for experimental and development purposes and/or will be deeply integrated as accelerators, i.e., as quantum processing units (QPUs), in existing HPC infrastructures to carry out first practical computations.

Although QC still lags behind classical computing for most practical applications, its completely novel computational approach based on tensor products of states could revolutionize scientific computing and enable discoveries across a diverse range of fields beyond the reach of classical methods. The research in applications of QC to real-world problems, however, is still in its infancy. Therefore, the early entry into the practical application of QC is of utmost urgency in order to evaluate QC as a new computer technology. The prerequisite for this is early access to quantum computers at the forefront of development, taking into account the different technical approaches. Another prerequisite for the practical application of QC is the integration of quantum computers into existing HPC infrastructures in order to enable the execution of quantum-classical hybrid computing models on the integrated HPC-QC infrastructure.

Recent advances in quantum computing technology allow for the first establishments of hybrid quantum-HP computing infrastructures. Although there is still a big gap in computing capabilities between the high performance and the quantum computers these hybrid infrastructures will be a first proof-of-principle of the potential of quantum-classical hybrid computations and thus practical quantum computing.

The goal of this BoF session is to bring the HPC and QC communities closer together with the objective to scrutinize HPC codes and workflows for potential hybrid quantum-classical computing. The focus will be primarily on the identification of the required tool set, including the infrastructure and of the potential applications, and less on the computation acceleration.

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