Alex Khan - Quantum Computing Experimentation with Amazon Braket

Explore Amazon Braket quantum computing to solve combinatorial optimization problems

Alex Khan

BIRMINGHAMMUMBAI

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To my family and friends who have suffered through my crazy ideas and tangents; believe it or not, it is you who inspire me to take risks and be myself.

To the authors, researchers, and entrepreneurs in quantum computing who have taken the time to share their wisdom and stories with the rest of us.

And, to you, my reader, since you are curious and taking a chance. It is my hope that this book will help to clarify some aspects of a complicated discipline.

Alex Khan

It is truly an honor to receive a request to write a foreword for a book like this, in this particular space, at this specific time in history, and by a colleague whom I believe will make significant contributions to this industry during his tenure. That book is Quantum Computing Experimentation with Amazon Braket, the space is quantum computing, the time in history is the infancy of an advanced technology that realistically expects the change the world, and my colleague is Alex Khan.

Alex and I got involved with quantum computing at roughly the same time, and with connections and collaborations with other esteemed colleagues in the domain, such as Dr. Keeper Lane Sharkey, we all began our journey in this space, making contributions where our respective talents best positioned us to: Alex in the quantum start-up, education, and consultancy space; Keeper in the quantum chemistry space; and I brought quantum computing to a fortune-five health company with 350,000 global employees and continue to lead the quantum efforts there.

Its not surprising to see contributions by industry leaders such as Alex manifested in books of this nature and undergirded by quantum vendors such as AWS, who bring significant and diverse computational capabilities to the table. The fusion of these two actors in the wild brings a richness to both the educational process and the process of developing valued industry skills, resulting in a far better outcome for the individual, and this is likely to be a key training model in the quantum space moving forward.

The books focus is as the title suggests: its a journey to explore and experiment with quantum computing using the Amazon Braket experience. This is appealing to both the neophyte and the experienced practitioner, as the latter will procure a solid tactical vendor education through a digestible and methodical pedagogy, and the former will get that plus an introduction to quantum basics as well. Readers will explore advanced topics in the later chapters, which is the ultimate commission of the book: to show real-world applications.

The book begins with the mechanics and specifics of the AWS platform, which is both necessary and wise since AWS brings an infrastructure as code approach to quantum computing, in addition to being the only vendor to make multiple quantum hardware architectures available under one cost-effective platform. This is important to industries in the wild seeking to get into quantum because experimentation now becomes an OpEx (operational expenditure) as opposed to a CapEx (capital expenditure), and that significantly lowers the entry price to quantum experimentation and increases the potential for senior leadership buy-in. Practitioners developing quantum capabilities on that framework will have more highly valued skill sets in the marketplace because of the exposure to multiple hardware platforms, as each platform brings something unique and different to the table when it comes to solving problems.

This book also provides a solid introduction to and overview of the two different quantum architectures (gate-based and annealing) and how to use them. The differences between the architectural variants within the gate-based architectures are significant, but nuanced. The differences between the annealing and the gate-based architectures are significant and glaring. The practitioner who gets hands-on experience in comparing and contrasting these two significantly different architectures and how they relate to specific use cases will have developed valuable capabilities. To this end, the book provides a solid journey through the D-Wave, OQC, IonQ, and Rigetti quantum architectures.

This book does a great job of weaving together specific use cases with general quantum education in the flow of its content. Thats a non-trivial task since the annealing architecture is so different than the gate-based architectures, and the ways of conceptualizing the problems (and solutions) vary significantly between any architecture being used, particularly at the algorithm level.

This book spends a decent amount of time on advanced subjects such as QAOA, QUBO, and hybrid algorithms, doing a solid job of laying out the use cases under consideration and how the various architectures would be used to address those subjects at a tactical level. This approach is particularly helpful when addressing the single versus multiple objective optimization use case as it highlights the differences between the annealing approach and the gate-based approach, something thats found in later chapters.

The quantum computing space is following a very similar maturation trajectory to the classical computing space in that it begins in the lab and ends in the hands of the consumer. We call that the producer/consumer difference. The producers make the technology, and the consumers use it to solve real problems in the wild. The consumers can only make proper use of the technology when both it and their understanding of how to effectively use it reach a certain level of maturity. The time between when producers mature the technology enough for consumers to effectively engage it can be viewed as eras, and certain seminal events have to occur before computation moves from one era to another. The classical illustration of one of those seminal events of this is when Dennis Ritchie invented C and UNIX, which enabled classical computing to move out from the labs and into the hands of the consumer.