Total Immersion : Reflections on IBM Quantum Challenge 2020

The 2020 IBM Quantum Challenge hosted 1,745 participants who used Qiskit to run 5,054,517,692 quantum circuits. The participants deployed an impressive variety of techniques, including machine learning, to tackle the most difficult exercise, optimizing a unitary operator derived from a 16x16
matrix to run efficiently on 4 qubits.

This Challenge was very competitive: you could almost feel steam rising in the Slack channel. I’m not one of the acrobats or lion tamers or ringmasters among Qiskit enthusiasts: I just wash the elephants. I’d like to share what I experienced participating in the Challenge from the elephant-side view.

• I completed the challenge. Though I spent many hours in 2019 refreshing my high school linear algebra from half a century ago, still, the Challenge required I be force-fed more matrix math like a goose on its way to be coming foie gras. I gratefully recognize here the kind assistance of fellow Qiskit enthusiast and mathematician par excellence Tamer Elkholy of MIT.
• My understanding of quantum computing, which I have followed as an dilettante for over 20 years, was deeply refreshed and overhauled in the course of four days. As a veteran of many chess tournaments, I’m familiar with the intellectual annealing one undergoes through days of total immersion in a subject.
• The Challenge underscored the mind-bending power of IBM Qiskit’s revamped approach to teaching quantum computation. The emphasis has shifted from visualizing the qubit as a Bloch sphere to teaching an increasingly adept audience to visualize the interaction of multiple qubits using the qsphere. Alongside showcase algorithms there is also an expanded library of sophisticated factorings. I came away with fog dispersed and a clearer vision of this science.
• The growing community of quantum computing scientists is completely international. Without access to hard statistics of attendance, the impression left from Slack interaction during the Challenge is that at least half the participants, possibly substantially more, were from outside the USA and Europe, with perhaps the largest national group logging in from India.
• The participants were of breathtaking skill and scope. Some of the finest young minds around the world took part; they even managed to surprise and delight the hosts by besting by one (45) in four day’s work the test circuit’s optimization score (46) which the Qiskit team had thought final and unbeatable.

Finally, let’s recognize the maturing of the IBM Research & Development team centered on quantum computing and Qiskit. The amount of work required to prepare the Challenge and the quality of the finished project is phenomenal. The personal engagement via Slack chat of the IBM principals, the community minders, the programmers, the physicists and theoreticians, including Jay Gambetta, IBM Fellow and Vice President, Quantum Computing, is certainly unparalleled in the history of the field.

Author Nelson Henderson wrote,”The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” While quantum computing will likely not reach its full potential during my career span, it is evolving rapidly, and will become mainstream during the careers of many or most of the participants in the Challenge. It was a privilege and a pleasure to take part in the intellectual ferment of a talented group of pioneers.