Application-Driven Benchmarking of the Traveling Salesperson Problem: a Quantum Hardware Deep-Dive

The potential analysis of the capabilities of quantum computing, especially before fault tolerance at scale, is difficult due to the variety of existing hardware technologies with a wide spread of maturity. Not only the result of computations, but also the very process of running quantum-enhanced algorithms differ from provider to provider. The study includes a comparative analysis of various hardware architectures with the example of the Traveling Salesperson Problem, a central class of combinatorial optimization. It highlights what steps are necessary to run real-world applications on quantum hardware, showcases how the providers and various technologies differ and presents results in the relative efficiency of exemplary quantum algorithms on neutral atom-based, ion trap and superconducting hardware, the latter including both gate-based and annealing devices. This is an important step in advancing the understanding of quantum computing capabilities from an application standpoint - agnostic to the underlying qubit technology and projecting results into the future to judge what further developments on the application side are necessary.