Benchmarking simulated and physical quantum processing units using quantum and hybrid algorithms

Powerful hardware services and software libraries are vital tools for quickly and affordably designing, testing, and executing quantum algorithms. A robust large-scale study of how the performance of these platforms scales with the number of qubits is key to providing quantum solutions to challenging industry problems. Such an evaluation is difficult owing to the availability and price of physical quantum processing units. This work benchmarks the runtime and accuracy for a representative sample of specialized high-performance simulated and physical quantum processing units. Results show the QMware cloud computing service can reduce the runtime for executing a quantum circuit by up to 78% compared to the next fastest option for algorithms with fewer than 27 qubits. The AWS SV1 simulator offers a runtime advantage for larger circuits, up to the maximum 34 qubits available with SV1. Beyond this limit, QMware provides the ability to execute circuits as large as 40 qubits. Physical quantum devices, such as Rigetti's Aspen-M2, can provide an exponential runtime advantage for circuits with more than 30. However, the high financial cost of physical quantum processing units presents a serious barrier to practical use. Moreover, of the four quantum devices tested, only IonQ's Harmony achieves high fidelity with more than four qubits. This study paves the way to understanding the optimal combination of available software and hardware for executing practical quantum algorithms.