Ahead of the Curve: Engineering Simulation for Computers of the Future

一般来说，建模和仿真是工程研究、开发和设计的关键要素；它协助从航空航天到制造业到生物医学等行业的工具和方法的创建和优化。尽管今天拥有强大的超级计算能力，但我们仍然被具有重大社会和经济意义的问题所包围，这些问题的复杂性远远超出了现代计算的范围。例如，在真实的尺度上对湍流进行直接数值模拟（例如整架飞机），针对患者的数字药物试验，几个月而不是几天的准确天气预报。新兴技术和百亿亿次超级计算机将极大地提高我们的模拟能力，EPSRC和欧盟资助的几个项目解决了这些系统模拟的挑战。然而，在不久的将来，量子计算机有望彻底改变信息时代，从而有可能模拟复杂的工程问题。虽然百亿亿次系统的计算速度可能是百亿亿次，但量子计算机理论上的时钟速度可能是无限的，而是受到信息传输时间等问题的阻碍。实用的量子计算机在主流应用中还需要许多年的时间，虽然在硬件开发（研究和工业）方面有一致的努力，但相对较少的关注是在这些新设备上进行工程模拟的数值算法开发。本项目通过探索当代流行的数值算法对量子计算的适应性来解决这一疏忽。算法比较将在模拟量子系统上进行，如果可能的话，算法增强建议更好地适应未来的非确定性架构。一个关键的成果将是第一个用于量子机器的实用数值算法开发框架，供工程师在未来几十年用于建模和仿真。

Modelling and simulation is a key element of research, development and design in engineering generally; it assists in the creation and optimisation of tools and methods across industries from aerospace to manufacturing to biomedical. Despite the significant supercomputing power available today, we are still surrounded by problems of great societal and economic significance with a complexity far beyond the reach of modern computation. Examples include direct numerical simulation for turbulence on real-life scales (e.g. an entire aircraft), patient-specific digital drug trials, accurate weather prediction over months, rather than days. Emerging technologies and exascale supercomputers will greatly improve our simulation capability, and there are several EPSRC and EU funded projects addressing the challenges to simulation on these systems. In the not-to-distant future however, quantum computers promise to revolutionise the information age and, accordingly, the potential for simulating complex engineering problems. While exascale systems may calculate at a quintillion flops, quantum computers may be theoretically unlimited in clock speed, hindered instead by matters such as information transmission time. Practical quantum computers in mainstream use remain many years away, and while there is a concerted effort in hardware development (in research and industry), comparatively little attention is being paid to numerical algorithm development for engineering simulation on these new devices. This project addresses this oversight by exploring the amenability of popular contemporary numerical algorithms to quantum computing. Algorithm comparisons will be carried out on emulated quantum systems and, if possible, algorithm enhancements suggested for a better fit to future non-deterministic architectures. A key deliverable will be the first framework for practical numerical algorithm development for quantum machines for use by engineers in modelling and simulation in the coming decades.