Potential Energy Advantage of Quantum Economy
This addresses energy sustainability for firms in the computing industry, though it is incremental as it builds on existing economic models to apply to quantum computing.
The paper tackles the problem of high energy costs in computing by redefining quantum advantage in terms of energy efficiency, showing through a Cournot competition model that quantum computing firms can achieve higher profitability and energy efficiency than classical ones at Nash equilibrium, with benefits contingent on large-scale computation.
Energy cost is increasingly crucial in the modern computing industry with the wide deployment of large-scale machine learning models and language models. For the firms that provide computing services, low energy consumption is important both from the perspective of their own market growth and the government's regulations. In this paper, we study the energy benefits of quantum computing vis-a-vis classical computing. Deviating from the conventional notion of quantum advantage based solely on computational complexity, we redefine advantage in an energy efficiency context. Through a Cournot competition model constrained by energy usage, we demonstrate quantum computing firms can outperform classical counterparts in both profitability and energy efficiency at Nash equilibrium. Therefore quantum computing may represent a more sustainable pathway for the computing industry. Moreover, we discover that the energy benefits of quantum computing economies are contingent on large-scale computation. Based on real physical parameters, we further illustrate the scale of operation necessary for realizing this energy efficiency advantage.