Abstract
Quantum annealing (QA) has the potential to significantly improve solution quality and reduce time complexity in solving combinatorial optimization problems compared to classical optimization methods. However, due to the limited number of qubits and their connectivity, the QA hardware did not show such an advantage over classical methods in past benchmarking studies. Recent advancements in QA with more than 5000 qubits, enhanced qubit connectivity, and the hybrid architecture promise to realize the quantum advantage. Here, we use a quantum annealer with state-of-the-art techniques and benchmark its performance against classical solvers. To compare their performance, we solve over 50 optimization problem instances represented by large and dense Hamiltonian matrices using quantum and classical solvers. The results demonstrate that a state-of-the-art quantum solver has higher accuracy (~0.013%) and a significantly faster problem-solving time (~6561×) than the best classical solver. Our results highlight the advantages of leveraging QA over classical counterparts, particularly in hybrid configurations, for achieving high accuracy and substantially reduced problem solving time in large-scale real-world optimization problems.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 77 |
| Journal | npj Quantum Information |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2025 |
Funding
This research used resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is supported by the Office of Science of the US Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725. This research was supported by the Quantum Computing Based on Quantum Advantage Challenge Research (RS-2023-00255442) through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Korean Government (Ministry of Science and ICT(MSIT)). Notice: This manuscript has in part been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of the manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-publicaccess-plan).