“1970s era computer performs latest technology”
By Scott Hamilton
Keeping in line with my ancient technologies theme from the last few weeks, I came across a fascinating piece of research from a group of anonymous researchers utilizing a Commodore 64 (C64) personal computer. They were able to complete a computation claimed by top engineers at IBM to be “too difficult to perform on a classical computer to an acceptable accuracy, using the leading approximation techniques.” The problem was used as proof by IBM that quantum computers provided a unique utility not possible on even modern computing hardware.
The “IBM ‘quantum utility’ experiment” was meant to prove that their quantum processor could drastically improve the performance of the complex problem. The paper was originally meant as a joke, but surprisingly proves the point that quantum computing technology still has a long way to go before seeing any large-scale utilization. Personally I believe the result surprised the team making the attempt. The paper seems to have started as a joke from the direction of wondering if it were possible to simulate the complex quantum system on such old hardware.
The 40-year-old C64 computer had a blazing fast MOS 6502 processor running at a mere 1MHz (nearly 2500 times slower than the one in your current laptop). The group of researchers used the leading simulation technique believed to require multiple terabytes of memory to execute, but discovered a new technique to execute the model in only 15 Kb of the 64 Kb of available memory in this antique computer. In order to free all 64Kb of memory in the computer for computation, the team loaded their 2,500 lines of code onto a expansion cartridge that utilized the C64’s expansion port. The code was not very fast in the execution as it could only compute a single data point every four minutes, where the same code running on a modern CPU completed a single data-point in less than one second.
The team used the sparse Pauli dynamics technique that was developed by Begusic, Hejazi and Chan to approximate the behavior of ferromagnetic materials. Details in their original paper reveal quite a unique story in the computer science world. It has already been proven by several scientists that the Pauli dynamics technique is easily computed on even a modern laptop with a great deal of accuracy, but this team took it to a new level.
The team has even made claims that their “Qommodore 64” is “faster than the quantum device datapoint-for-datapoint” and is also much more energy efficient (12 Watts versus 25,000 Watts). It also provided what is considered to be decently accurate results on comparison with the results from the quantum processor.
The anonymous “Qommodore 64” researcher rather snarkily stated that “it probably won’t work on almost any other problem (but then again neither do quantum computers right now).” The research did an excellent job on providing extreme detail into how the experiment was executed, steps to repeat it, and detailed references to all of the related research. It has been extremely difficult for the general computer science community to dispute the report, nor have they been able to determine if the results are real or if the entire paper was just meant as a joke.
The original paper was released at the SIGBOVIK 2024 conference, which meant that it had to pass the acceptance criteria to the conference, which makes it seem very likely to be real results provided in a unique way, leaving the community hunting for the truth. If you want to read the paper, you can find a copy in the free conference proceedings at https://sigbovik.org/2024/proceedings.pdf, beginning on page 199. You can also find all the details of the “quantum utility” experiment linked in their paper.
Until next week, stay safe and learn something new.
Scott Hamilton is an Expert in Emerging Technologies at ATOS and can be reached with questions and comments via email to sh*******@te**********.org or through his website at https://www.techshepherd.org.
