XSEDE15

With the advancement in the computational systems environments promising exascale performance in the near future, the ability to solve large, multifarious scientific problems in various science and engineering fields, as well as society domains has increased. The NSF XSEDE program integrates the XD (eXtreme Digital) resources that are architecturally and geographically diverse, and provide computational capabilities and services to the XD users, thus facilitates a state-of-the-art discovery environment enabling the ability to solve large-scale computationally intensive problems. However, some scientific problems, such as, binary variable optimization problems may be NP (nondeterministic polynomial time), consequently the time required for a classical computer to perform an optimization grows much faster than any power law with the size of the system. The quantum adiabatic computers have unique capabilities compared to the classical computers in obtaining optimal solutions to NP problems, and in reducing the time to solution. In past decades, the use of quantum computers as a stable computing technology has been debatable. However, recently this perception seems to be changing with the obtainability of adiabatic quantum annealing with over one thousand qubits from D-Wave systems.
 
The intent of this Birds of a Feather session is to invoke a free and open exchange of experiences and ideas between sites, researchers, users, and developers that have already been involved with research using quantum computers and its requisite infrastructure and those that are considering doing so. There is no “right answer” to using quantum computing, and choice will certainly depend on many factors, such as, system size, existing research area, type of science and engineering problems, and availability of the access to the quantum computers. This BoF session will provide a forum for users of XSEDE as well as the developers that are involved in testing and validating the performance of D-Wave Quantum computers to discuss experiences and issues in using and porting the systems with respect to NP problems, such as, random spanning tree and machine learning problems.
 
This BoF will bring together a panel of experts from Mississippi State University and D-Wave Systems Inc, to survey and compare the start-of-the-art classical and quantum computing systems. Future plans for integrating quantum computers with XSEDE, and its potential benefits to the community at large will be discussed. We invite researchers, users, and developers to participate in this session to form collaborations, learn about, and influence the direction of this body of work.