



02646nas a2200241   4500008004100000245008200041210006900123260001500192520190700207100002902114700002302143700001802166700002302184700001502207700002002222700002702242700002402269700001902293700002002312700001702332700001802349856003702367       2017                        eng d00aOn the readiness of quantum optimization machines for industrial applications0 areadiness of quantum optimization machines for industrial applic  c2017/08/313 a<p><span style="font-family: &quot;Lucida Grande&quot;, helvetica, arial, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14.4px;">There have been multiple attempts to demonstrate that quantum annealing and, in particular, quantum annealing on quantum annealing machines, has the potential to outperform current classical optimization algorithms implemented on CMOS technologies. The benchmarking of these devices has been controversial. Initially, random spin-glass problems were used, however, these were quickly shown to be not well suited to detect any quantum speedup. Subsequently, benchmarking shifted to carefully crafted synthetic problems designed to highlight the quantum nature of the hardware while (often) ensuring that classical optimization techniques do not perform well on them. Even worse, to date a true sign of improved scaling with the number problem variables remains elusive when compared to classical optimization techniques. Here, we analyze the readiness of quantum annealing machines for real-world application problems. These are typically not random and have an underlying structure that is hard to capture in synthetic benchmarks, thus posing unexpected challenges for optimization techniques, both classical and quantum alike. We present a comprehensive computational scaling analysis of fault diagnosis in digital circuits, considering architectures beyond D-wave quantum annealers. We find that the instances generated from real data in multiplier circuits are harder than other representative random spin-glass benchmarks with a comparable number of variables. Although our results show that transverse-field quantum annealing is outperformed by state-of-the-art classical optimization algorithms, these benchmark instances are hard and small in the size of the input, therefore representing the first industrial application ideally suited for near-term quantum annealers.</span></p>1 aPerdomo-Ortiz, Alejandro1 aFeldman, Alexander1 aOzaeta, Asier1 aIsakov, Sergei, V.1 aZhu, Zheng1 aO'Gorman, Bryan1 aKatzgraber, Helmut, G.1 aDiedrich, Alexander1 aNeven, Hartmut1 ade Kleer, Johan1 aLackey, Brad1 aBiswas, Rupak  uhttps://arxiv.org/abs/1708.09780