Comcast, Classiq and AMD Demonstrate Quantum Algorithm for More Resilient and Reliable Internet

Classiq, Comcast and AMD announced the completion of a groundbreaking trial aimed at improving Internet delivery by leveraging quantum algorithms to supercharge network routing resilience. The joint trial tackled a fundamental network design challenge: identifying independent backup paths for network sites when implementing network maintenance and change management. The goal being that if a network site is taken offline for routine maintenance, should a second site unexpectedly fail during that window, network traffic could be seamlessly rerouted without any disruption or degradation to customer connectivity.

To achieve this outcome, operators must identify unique backup paths that are fast, resilient to simultaneous link failures, and optimized for the lowest latency delivery, a task that becomes exponentially harder to identify as networks grow. The trial applied quantum techniques, alongside high-performance classical computing, to test whether quantum algorithms could successfully identify unique network backup paths in real-time across change management scenarios. It comprised of execution on quantum hardware and in accelerated simulation environments that made use of AMD Instinct??

GPUs to achieve meaningful computational capacity (qubit scale) not yet possible through quantum hardware alone. With the GPU-accelerated simulations, the teams were able to iterate rapidly and validate algorithm behavior, together with runs executed on quantum hardware to assess implementation success. Review more detailed trial results in this scholarly article authored by the research team and this blog post for quantum developers.

Classiq provided quantum software and engineering support, empowering rapid modeling, optimized implementation and execution across both hardware and simulated environment executions. Optimization problems in global telecommunications networks represent large combinatorial search spaces that grow exponentially with network size, making them computationally intensive to solve - the perfect challenge for quantum computing.