Quinton Finley Alexander, Myhr Per Arne Sevle, Barani Mostafa, Crespo Del Granado Pedro, Zhang Hongyu
Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7491, Trondheim, Norway.
Centre for Cosmology, Particle Physics and Phenomenology, Université Catholique de Louvain, 1348, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
Sci Rep. 2025 Apr 13;15(1):12733. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-96220-2.
Quantum computing is rapidly advancing, harnessing the power of qubits' superposition and entanglement for computational advantages over classical systems. However, scalability poses a primary challenge for these machines. By implementing a hybrid workflow between classical and quantum computing instances, D-Wave has succeeded in pushing this boundary to the realm of industrial use. Furthermore, they have recently opened up to mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problems, expanding their applicability to many relevant problems in the field of optimisation. However, the extent of their suitability for diverse problem categories and their computational advantages remains unclear. This study conducts a comprehensive examination by applying a selection of diverse case studies to benchmark the performance of D-Wave's hybrid solver against that of industry-leading solvers such as CPLEX, Gurobi, and IPOPT. The findings indicate that D-Wave's hybrid solver is currently most advantageous for integer quadratic objective functions and shows potential for quadratic constraints. To illustrate this, we applied it to a real-world energy problem, specifically the MILP unit commitment problem. While D-Wave can solve such problems, its performance has not yet matched that of its classical counterparts.
量子计算正在迅速发展,利用量子比特的叠加和纠缠特性来获得超越经典系统的计算优势。然而,可扩展性是这些机器面临的主要挑战。通过在经典计算实例和量子计算实例之间实现混合工作流程,D-Wave成功地将这一边界拓展到了工业应用领域。此外,他们最近还涉足了混合整数线性规划(MILP)问题,将其适用性扩展到优化领域的许多相关问题。然而,它们对不同问题类别的适用性程度及其计算优势仍不明确。本研究通过应用一系列不同的案例研究进行全面考察,以将D-Wave混合求解器的性能与CPLEX、Gurobi和IPOPT等行业领先求解器的性能进行基准对比。研究结果表明,D-Wave混合求解器目前对于整数二次目标函数最为有利,并且在二次约束方面显示出潜力。为了说明这一点,我们将其应用于一个实际的能源问题,即MILP机组组合问题。虽然D-Wave可以解决此类问题,但其性能尚未达到经典同类产品的水平。