Quantum computing is one of the most enticing computational paradigms with the potential to revolutionize diverse areas of future-generation computational systems. While quantum computing hardware has advanced rapidly, from tiny laboratory experiments to quantum chips that can outperform even the largest supercomputers on specialized computational tasks, these noisy-intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) processors are still too small and non-robust to be directly useful for any real-world applications. In this paper, we describe NASA’s work in assessing and advancing the potential of quantum computing. We discuss advances in algorithms, both near- and longer-term, and the results of our explorations on current hardware as well as with simulations, including illustrating the benefits of algorithm-hardware co-design in the NISQ era. This work also includes physics-inspired classical algorithms that can be used at application scale today. We discuss innovative tools supporting the assessment and advancement of quantum computing and describe improved methods for simulating quantum systems of various types on high-performance computing systems that incorporate realistic error models. We provide an overview of recent methods for benchmarking, evaluating, and characterizing quantum hardware for error mitigation, as well as insights into fundamental quantum physics that can be harnessed for computational purposes.

中文翻译：

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评估和推进量子计算的潜力：NASA 案例研究


量子计算是最有吸引力的计算范式之一，有可能彻底改变未来一代计算系统的各个领域。虽然量子计算硬件发展迅速，从小型实验室实验到在专门计算任务上甚至可以超越最大超级计算机的量子芯片，但这些有噪声的中级量子 (NISQ) 处理器仍然太小且不稳健，无法直接用于任何现实世界的应用程序。在本文中，我们描述了 NASA 在评估和推进量子计算潜力方面的工作。我们讨论近期和长期算法的进展，以及我们对当前硬件和模拟的探索结果，包括说明 NISQ 时代算法-硬件协同设计的好处。这项工作还包括受物理启发的经典算法，可以在当今的应用规模上使用。我们讨论支持量子计算评估和进步的创新工具，并描述在包含现实误差模型的高性能计算系统上模拟各种类型量子系统的改进方法。我们概述了用于缓解错误的量子硬件的基准测试、评估和表征的最新方法，以及对可用于计算目的的基础量子物理的见解。