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

建模和仿真通常是工程研究，开发和设计的关键要素;它有助于创建和优化从航空航天到制造业到生物医学的各个行业的工具和方法。尽管当今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，其复杂性远远超出了现代计算的范围。例如，在现实生活中（例如整个飞机）对湍流进行直接数值模拟，特定于患者的数字药物试验，数月而不是数天的准确天气预测。新兴技术和亿亿次超级计算机将大大提高我们的模拟能力，有几个EPSRC和欧盟资助的项目解决这些系统上的模拟挑战。然而，在不久的将来，量子计算机有望彻底改变信息时代，从而具有模拟复杂工程问题的潜力。虽然exascale系统可以以五次方次浮点运算进行计算，但量子计算机在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。实际的量子计算机在主流应用中仍然需要很多年的时间，虽然在硬件开发（研究和工业）方面有共同的努力，但对这些新设备上工程模拟的数值算法开发的关注相对较少。该项目通过探索流行的当代数值算法对量子计算的顺从性来解决这一疏忽。算法比较将在仿真量子系统上进行，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。一个关键的交付成果将是量子机器实用数值算法开发的第一个框架，供工程师在未来几十年的建模和仿真中使用。

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.