Analysis of Higher-Order Ising Hamiltonians
This work addresses a domain-specific problem for researchers and engineers in quantum computing or optimization, but it appears incremental as it focuses on simulation rather than physical implementation.
The paper tackles the challenge of scaling Ising machines for industrial problems by proposing IsingSim, a theoretical framework for simulating higher-order Ising models, with a proof-of-concept implementation verifying its utility as a design tool.
It is challenging to scale Ising machines for industrial-level problems due to algorithm or hardware limitations. Although higher-order Ising models provide a more compact encoding, they are, however, hard to physically implement. This work proposes a theoretical framework of a higher-order Ising simulator, IsingSim. The Ising spins and gradients in IsingSim are decoupled and self-customizable. We significantly accelerate the simulation speed via a bidirectional approach for differentiating the hyperedge functions. Our proof-of-concept implementation verifies the theoretical framework by simulating the Ising spins with exact and approximate gradients. Experiment results show that our novel framework can be a useful tool for providing design guidelines for higher-order Ising machines.