Kearney, advised by Cascade Quantum, independently verified IonQ's application-centric benchmark results, focusing on the Time-to-Solution methodology and performance data across four benchmarks: QFT, Hidden Shift, LR-QAOA, and VQE.
The verification covered code reviews of benchmark quality scoring and TTS estimation, reproduction of results from original sample distributions across both IonQ and competitor systems, and live validation runs on IonQ hardware. All checks passed across QFT, Hidden Shift, and LR-QAOA. The VQE benchmark was verified on execution time and quality scoring.
Kearney affirmed that IonQ's procedures for measuring these benchmarks adhere to the defined rules and that the collected data is consistent under validation. Results are timebound to the system's calibration state and software revision at the time of execution.
The report also notes the broader opportunity for industry-wide standardization of execution time reporting — and proposes a neutral third-party consortium, similar to MLCommons for MLPerf, to develop and review quantum benchmarks against consistent, industry-wide rules.
Read the full verification report for methodology details, benchmark-by-benchmark results, and recommendations for future benchmarking standards.
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