(Invited) AI-Guided Codesign for Novel Computing Paradigms
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The transformative impact of modern computational paradigms and technologies, such as high-performance computing, quantum computing, and cloud computing, has opened up profound new opportunities for scientific simulations. Scalable computational chemistry is one beneficiary of this technological progress. The main focus of this paper is on the performance of various quantum chemical formulations, ranging from low-order methods to high-accuracy approaches, implemented in different computational chemistry packages, such as NWChem, NWChemEx, SPEC, ExaChem, and FLOSIC codes on the Azure Quantum Element (AQE) Microsoft cloud services. We pay particular attention to the intricate workflows for performing composite chemistry simulations, associated data curation, and mechanisms for accuracy assessment, as defined by the enabling cloud Computational Chemistry as a Service (CCaaS). Our focus also extends to Arrows' automated workflow for high throughput simulations. Finally, we provide a perspective on the role of cloud computing in supporting the mission of leadership computational facilities (LCFs).
Abstract Implementations of neurons, delays, and synapse circuits are presented with simulations. These neural elements are used to create two small spiking neural networks, the Rate-Window and Order-Biased clusters, which are capable of detecting simple two-spike spatiotemporal patterns. A simple pattern detecting network (SPDN) is created by combining the Rate-Window and Order-Biased clusters, where clusters are small spiking neural networks, and its simple pattern detection ability is demonstrated in simulation. The SPDN is used to implement a complex pattern detecting network (CPDN) and its complex pattern detection ability is demonstrated in simulation. Methods for generating arbitrary spatiotemporal patterns are presented. The CPDN and spatiotemporal pattern generation methods are then used to implement a novel spatiotemporal computing paradigm based on detecting and responding to spatiotemporal symbols. A simulation of a spatiotemporal half adder is presented to demonstrate the computing paradigm.
The power of quantum chemistry to predict the ground and excited state properties of complex chemical systems has driven the development of computational quantum chemistry software, integrating advances in theory, applied mathematics, and computer science. The emergence of new computational paradigms associated with exascale technologies also poses significant challenges that require a flexible forward strategy to take full advantage of existing and forthcoming computational resources. In this context, the sustainability and interoperability of computational chemistry software development are among the most pressing issues. In this perspective, we discuss software infrastructure needs and investments with an eye to fully utilize exascale resources and provide unique computational tools for next-generation science problems and scientific discoveries.
The Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT) grants competitive advantages, especially in resource usage and circuit approximation, for performing arithmetic operations on quantum computers, and offers a potential route toward a numerical quantum-computational paradigm. In this paper, we utilize efficient techniques to implement QFT-based integer addition and multiplications. These operations are fundamental to various quantum applications including Shor’s algorithm, weighted-sum optimization problems in data processing and machine learning, and quantum algorithms requiring inner products. We carry out performance evaluations of these implementations based on IBM’s superconducting-qubit architecture using different compatible noise models. We isolate the sensitivity of the component quantum circuits on both one-/two-qubit gate error rates, and the number of the arithmetic operands’ superposed integer states. We analyze performance and identify the most effective approximation depths for unsigned quantum addition and quantum multiplication within the given context. We then perform a similar analysis of signed addition and compare to the unsigned results. We observe significant dependency of the optimal approximation depth on the degree of machine noise and the number of superposed states in certain performance regimes. Finally, we elaborate on the algorithmic challenges—relevant to signed, unsigned, modular and non-modular versions—that could also be applied to current implementations of QFT-based subtraction, division, exponentiation, and their potential tensor extensions. Here, we analyze the performance trends in our results and speculate on possible future developments within this computational paradigm.
Machine learning algorithms are heavily relied on to understand the vast amounts of data from high-energy particle collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The data from such collision events can naturally be represented with graph structures. Therefore, deep geometric methods, such as graph neural networks (GNNs), have been leveraged for various data analysis tasks in high-energy physics. One typical task is jet tagging, where jets are viewed as point clouds with distinct features and edge connections between their constituent particles. The increasing size and complexity of the LHC particle datasets, as well as the computational models used for their analysis, have greatly motivated the development of alternative fast and efficient computational paradigms such as quantum computation. In addition, to enhance the validity and robustness of deep networks, we can leverage the fundamental symmetries present in the data through the use of invariant inputs and equivariant layers. In this paper, we provide a fair and comprehensive comparison of classical graph neural networks (GNNs) and equivariant graph neural networks (EGNNs) and their quantum counterparts: quantum graph neural networks (QGNNs) and equivariant quantum graph neural networks (EQGNN). The four architectures were benchmarked on a binary classification task to classify the parton-level particle initiating the jet. Based on their area under the curve (AUC) scores, the quantum networks were found to outperform the classical networks. However, seeing the computational advantage of quantum networks in practice may have to wait for the further development of quantum technology and its associated application programming interfaces (APIs).
The scientific computing paradigm has transitioned from compute-intensive to I/O-intensive and memory-intensive in the past decade, especially when data-driven science has become common practice. Numerous empirical I/O-aware scheduling optimizations have been developed by incorporating I/O capacity and bandwidth as constraints into scheduling. Unfortunately, there is a lack of data flow (I/O) characterization tool and an understanding of trade-offs between concurrency, locality, and I/O bandwidth. To bridge the gap, this work 1) presents a set of descriptors to characterize, organize, and visualize I/O profiles, including flow size, I/O bandwidth, and operation count, which group data flows by I/O types, tasks, and files; 2) proposes an I/O Roofline model-based trade-off analysis to find the optimal trade-off between flow operational intensity, concurrency, and flow performance. The I/O descriptors generate useful insights into complicated I/O behaviors, suggesting distinct concurrency, storage, and scheduling to be used by types, tasks, and files. The proposed trade-off analysis guides scheduling decisions that generate resource assignment with the best flow parallelism. We evaluate our I/O-aware scheduling methodology on a highly I/O-intensive workflow–1000 Genomes. The experimental results demonstrate speedups of up to 2.4× compared to the state-of-the- art methods.
This work reports that synchronization of Mott material-based nanoscale coupled spiking oscillators can be drastically different from that in conventional harmonic oscillators. We investigated the synchronization of spiking nanooscillators mediated by thermal interactions due to the close physical proximity of the devices. Controlling the driving voltage enables in-phase 1:1 and 2:1 integer synchronization modes between neighboring oscillators. Transition between these two integer modes occurs through an unusual stochastic synchronization regime instead of the loss of spiking coherence. In the stochastic synchronization regime, random length spiking sequences belonging to the 1:1 and 2:1 integer modes are intermixed. The occurrence of this stochasticity is an important factor that must be taken into account in the design of large-scale spiking networks for hardware-level implementation of novel computational paradigms such as neuromorphic and stochastic computing.
The stop-and-go traffic pattern on urban roads often results in excessive energy consumption because of unnecessary vehicle braking, idling, and accelerations. With the widespread and increased use of automobiles, this traffic pattern creates many negative impacts (e.g., delayed travel time, air pollution, and additional carbon emission) on the sustainability of our cities. Taking advantage of the recent emerging Internet of Things (IoT) and edge computing paradigms, we propose a mobile edge computing framework that integrates the capability of real-time vehicle-to-infrastructure communication and intelligent speed optimization algorithms into a mobile app to optimize individual vehicles' driving speed at signalized intersections. The optimization aims to mitigate the stop-and-go traffic pattern and its undesirable consequences in urban transportation systems. The framework consists of (1) a cyberinfrastructure-enabled dynamic messaging system for retrieving and delivering real-time traffic and signal phase and timing information from IoT-connected signal controllers and sensors, (2) a real-time speed optimization algorithm for generating intelligent speed advisory using vehicle's information (e.g., GPS and driving directions from mobile sensing) and corresponding signal and traffic information, and (3) an ad-hoc mobile computing environment that converts drivers' smartphones into edge devices to host the speed optimization algorithms for enabling intelligent advisory on the vehicle's driving speed within signalized corridors. The paper presents the design and implementation of the proposed framework. Finally, we demonstrate the feasibility, usefulness, and energy-saving benefits of our proposed framework and its prototyping mobile app on urban transportation systems through traffic simulation, real-vehicle laboratory experiments, an evaluative survey, and field communication tests. The simulation-based energy evaluation results show that the 100% usage of the mobile app can achieve 24% energy savings in the transportation system.
A quantum computing circuit is presented that approximates a single spin wave quantum on a linear chain of spin 1/2 particles described by a Heisenberg Hamiltonian. The circuit is a product state where each qubit represents a spin. The spin wave motion is represented by opening the cone angle using Y rotations and then adding progressive Z rotations along the chain to represent wave propagation. We show analytically that this product state yields the correct dispersion relation in the limit of an unbounded chain. This observation is confirmed using both a simulator and various quantum processors. The use of the quantum computing paradigm in this case does not lead to a computational advantage, but rather leads to a novel conceptual connection between classical and quantum descriptions of spin waves, and may also be useful for characterizing the error in quantum processors.
As the limits of Moore’s Law approaches, new computing paradigms are developing to breakthrough this bottleneck. One such computer architecture is neuromorphic computing, which models the brain. Electrochemical random-access memory (ECRAM) is a low power and energy efficient memory due to characteristics, such as in-memory compute, ion modulation of the channel conductance, and computation distribution with large scale array integration.
Quantum computing has emerged as a powerful computational paradigm capable of solving problems beyond the reach of classical computers. However, today’s quantum computers are noisy, posing challenges to obtaining accurate results. Here, we explore the impact of noise on quantum computing, focusing on the challenges in sampling bit strings from noisy quantum computers and the implications for optimization and machine learning. We formally quantify the sampling overhead to extract good samples from noisy quantum computers and relate it to the layer fidelity, a metric to determine the performance of noisy quantum processors. Further, we show how this allows us to use the conditional value at risk of noisy samples to determine provable bounds on noise-free expectation values. We discuss how to leverage these bounds for different algorithms and demonstrate our findings through experiments on real quantum computers involving up to 127 qubits. The results show strong alignment with theoretical predictions.
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.
Abstract Structured optical materials create new computing paradigms using photons, with transformative impact on various fields, including machine learning, computer vision, imaging, telecommunications, and sensing. This Perspective sheds light on the potential of free-space optical systems based on engineered surfaces for advancing optical computing. Manipulating light in unprecedented ways, emerging structured surfaces enable all-optical implementation of various mathematical functions and machine learning tasks. Diffractive networks, in particular, bring deep-learning principles into the design and operation of free-space optical systems to create new functionalities. Metasurfaces consisting of deeply subwavelength units are achieving exotic optical responses that provide independent control over different properties of light and can bring major advances in computational throughput and data-transfer bandwidth of free-space optical processors. Unlike integrated photonics-based optoelectronic systems that demand preprocessed inputs, free-space optical processors have direct access to all the optical degrees of freedom that carry information about an input scene/object without needing digital recovery or preprocessing of information. To realize the full potential of free-space optical computing architectures, diffractive surfaces and metasurfaces need to advance symbiotically and co-evolve in their designs, 3D fabrication/integration, cascadability, and computing accuracy to serve the needs of next-generation machine vision, computational imaging, mathematical computing, and telecommunication technologies.
The technical founder of Ludwig Computing Inc has been competitively selected for support by Cyclotron Road, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO) Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program (LEEP) through an approved merit review process. Ludwig Computing Inc, supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Manufacturing Office through the Cyclotron Road program, has investigated the advantages of probabilistic computing for real-world compute-intensive applications. This research adds to the understanding of alternative computing paradigms by exploring a unique hardware-software co-design that integrates quantum computing methods with nature-inspired problem-solving techniques. The project's focus on areas such as combinatorial optimization, graph analytics, and machine learning demonstrates the potential for significant advancements in computational efficiency and performance. By harnessing natural randomness to streamline large circuits into fewer devices, Ludwig's approach enables massive parallelism, potentially offering higher throughput, speed, and energy efficiency compared to conventional hardware solutions. This work benefits the public by paving the way for more efficient computing solutions that could address complex real-world problems while potentially reducing energy consumption in data-intensive industries.
Considerable attention has recently focused on the vast energy and water demands of supercomputing, namely large-scale data centers that underpin artificial intelligence (AI), one of the great disruptors of contemporary society. Looking ahead some years from now, quantum computing is poised to disrupt established computing paradigms once again. Scientists and engineers are now working intensely to bring this century-old dream of physicists to fruition. Yet, as quantum computers begin to be integrated with classical supercomputing architectures, the implications for energy and physical resource use also need to be understood, especially how they compare to today’s AI data centers. These impacts have not yet been quantified by the research community – a notable gap in the literature, even if commercial-scale deployment of Quantum-Accelerated Computing Infrastructure (QuACI) is not expected for a few more years. This study is the first to conduct such an assessment. Using publicly available information from academic sources and private industry, we characterize multiple configurations of superconducting qubit-based, fault-tolerant quantum computers (FTQC) that could plausibly be deployed at scale in the 2030s and into the 2040s. By parameterizing these FTQC systems at a process level, we conduct a prospective scenario analysis to quantify their energy and physical resource needs. While these estimates are uncertain, given the current state of quantum technologies and their unknown future trajectories, important insights can already be drawn. One key finding is that while the electricity needs for a fleet of FTQCs are within the bounds of previous modeling studies that have explored high electricity demand futures, the needs for certain physical resources, namely water and helium-3, could pose bottlenecks to QuACI scale-up.
As Moore’s Law and Dennard Scaling come to an end, it is becoming increasingly important to develop non-von Neumann computing architectures that can perform low-power computing in the domains of scientific computing, artificial intelligence, embedded systems, and edge computing. Next-generation computing technologies, such as neuromorphic computing and quantum computing, have the potential to revolutionize computing. However, in order to make progress in these fields, it is necessary to fundamentally change the current computing paradigm by codesigning systems across all system level, from materials to software. Because skilled labor is limited in the field of next-generation computing, we are developing artificial intelligence-enhanced tools to automate the codesign and co-discovery of next-generation computers. Here, we develop a method called Modular and Multi-level MAchine Learning (MAMMAL) which is able to perform analog codesign and co-discovery across multiple system levels, spanning devices to circuits. We prototype MAMMAL by using it to design simple passive analog low-pass filters. We also explore methods to incorporate uncertainty quantification into MAMMAL and to accelerate MAMMAL by using emerging technologies, such as crossbar arrays. Ultimately, we believe that MAMMAL will enable rapid progress in developing next-generation computers by automating the codesign and co-discovery of electronic systems.