For the first time in any student cluster competition, student teams were challenged to work a real-life problem on a quantum simulator, quantum emulator, AND a real quantum system.
Long time Winter Classic mentor Oak Ridge National Lab went above and beyond on this one, training the students up on quantum concepts and how to actually solve problems with quantum emulators/simulators (hosted on Frontier-clone Odo) and then how to run their code on a real IQM quantum system.
This was a mind-bending challenge for the teams. For most, this was their first time they had to even consider quantum computing, much less emulate it, simulate it, and then run a workload on a real system.
In the video, Henry Newman and I discuss this historic challenge, what the teams had to do, and reveal the scores.
This was NOT an easy challenge, as the scores show. We had nine teams turn in results and the average score was 69.77 out of 100 points possible. There were some surprises too, big ones. The University of New Mexico Lobos posted their first win and nabbed 100 points and newcomer UC Riverside was just behind with 95.40. The UC Santa Cruz Not So Slow Slugs rounded out the top three with 93.50.
But wait, there’s more!
I learned a lot more about this challenge in the following conversation with the Oak Ridge mentor team.
This was a deep pull by the entire Oak Ridge team. It came about during a meeting last fall when they were discussing what they might do for the 2025 Winter Classic. Someone said “Hey, what about that quantum education thing we’re working on? Could we use that somehow?”
Turns out they could. Which was a total surprise to me when we started talking in earnest about their plans for 2025. When I heard about the possibility of actually getting the students on a real quantum system, I sort of discounted it as a ‘great thought, maybe next year’ type of thing, thinking that just getting access to a system was a pretty big lift, not to mention coming up with an exercise that hit that ‘just right’ spot in terms of difficulty.
But they did it and they did it well. Watch the video to get a peek inside…
The students just completed the AWS challenge, which was also quite the departure from past competitions. Details on that soon, plus team interviews and even follow up interviews with many of them. Stay tuned…..