VW Solves Quantum Chemistry Problems on a D-Wave Machine • Hacker News Board

Re: VW Solves Quantum Chemistry Problems on a D-Wave Machine

#11

Post by williamscales » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 5:45 PM UTC

jf- wrote: post #8

twtw wrote: post #5

... and couldn't get the correct answers for LiH. Interesting that the article didn't mention this. From the paper: > For lithium hydride, LiH, we were not able to reproduce closely the ground state energy with the currently available hardware. When accounting for 3 orbitals and using a scaling factor of r = 4, we already had to use 1558 qubits, which is a large fraction of available qubits. To summarize: the investi…

Presumably because that’s just a matter of scale. The calculation didn’t turn out wrong, the machine just isn’t powerful enough to calculate it. All of this work is proof of concept for more powerful devices down the road, the point isn’t that it’s better than a classical computer right now.

Is there any evidence it will ever be better than a classical computer?

Re: VW Solves Quantum Chemistry Problems on a D-Wave Machine

#12

Post by ben_w » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #2

>For beginners, he says, an actual D-Wave device isn’t even necessary. I find this somewhat surprising. If you think of AI code designed for GPUs, there I can see "yeah you can practice on a CPU". It'll suck but it'll work. For quantum tech the entire sales pitch is that it's fundamentally different...doing what's near impossible on conventional hardware. Yes I realise he's talking about the library so annealing on a…

If I understand correctly (which is a big if given it is quantum mechanics), any quantum algorithm can be stimulated on a non-quantum computer, but doing so has an exponential penalty.

Re: VW Solves Quantum Chemistry Problems on a D-Wave Machine

#13

Post by iamlucaswolf » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 5:52 PM UTC

iamgopal wrote: post #6

VW also does science ? Nice to know. Is it related to battery technology etc ? Or such companies usually invest in fundamental research ?

They do. As an annecdote, the professor who formerly held the "Machine Learning" course at TU Munich left for VW's AI research group (https://argmax.ai) a few years ago. Whether that qualifies as "science" may be debatable, but the larger players in the automotive space are definitely invested in this kind of research.

Re: VW Solves Quantum Chemistry Problems on a D-Wave Machine

#14

Post by ams6110 » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 5:52 PM UTC

iamgopal wrote: post #6

VW also does science ? Nice to know. Is it related to battery technology etc ? Or such companies usually invest in fundamental research ?

They do. These days, battery chemistry is probably very interesting to them. Earlier, it would have been problems such as optimizing combustion chamber shape, etc.

Re: VW Solves Quantum Chemistry Problems on a D-Wave Machine

#15

Post by AlexCoventry » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 5:53 PM UTC

What's the business motivation of this research, for VW?

Re: VW Solves Quantum Chemistry Problems on a D-Wave Machine

#16

Post by FeepingCreature » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 5:53 PM UTC

williamscales wrote: post #11

jf- wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably because that’s just a matter of scale. The calculation didn’t turn out wrong, the machine just isn’t powerful enough to calculate it. All of this work is proof of concept for more powerful devices down the road, the point isn’t that it’s better than a classical computer right now.

Is there any evidence it will ever be better than a classical computer?

For the record, the concept is called Quantum Supremacy [1]. So far, there is no demonstration of quantum supremacy, but it seems like it may just be a matter of time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_supremacy

Re: VW Solves Quantum Chemistry Problems on a D-Wave Machine

#17

Post by pas » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 6:02 PM UTC

AlexCoventry wrote: post #15

What's the business motivation of this research, for VW?

Batteries? Fuel efficiency? Better catalytic emission filter?

Re: VW Solves Quantum Chemistry Problems on a D-Wave Machine

#18

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 6:16 PM UTC

FeepingCreature wrote: post #16

williamscales wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence it will ever be better than a classical computer?

For the record, the concept is called Quantum Supremacy [1]. So far, there is no demonstration of quantum supremacy, but it seems like it may just be a matter of time. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_supremacy

[deleted]

Re: VW Solves Quantum Chemistry Problems on a D-Wave Machine

#19

Post by jackfraser » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 6:23 PM UTC

crb002 wrote: post #9

Curious to see Aaronson's criticism.

Aaronson is unfortunately in a sunk-cost position when it comes to D-Wave - he's been so against them for so long that even if they start to produce good results his bias is going to make it difficult for him to fairly evaluate them, especially if it means reaching different conclusions about their past work than he did previously.

Probably better to look to other commentators on this one, at least until he has enough time to emotionally process the situation and come around to it. It's not so easy admitting you're wrong in the shtetl.

Re: VW Solves Quantum Chemistry Problems on a D-Wave Machine

#20

Post by lisper » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 6:23 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #12

Havoc wrote: post #2

>For beginners, he says, an actual D-Wave device isn’t even necessary. I find this somewhat surprising. If you think of AI code designed for GPUs, there I can see "yeah you can practice on a CPU". It'll suck but it'll work. For quantum tech the entire sales pitch is that it's fundamentally different...doing what's near impossible on conventional hardware. Yes I realise he's talking about the library so annealing on a…

If I understand correctly (which is a big if given it is quantum mechanics), any quantum algorithm can be stimulated on a non-quantum computer, but doing so has an exponential penalty.

Exactly right.