Toshiba's SQBM+ Quantum-Inspired Optimizer is Now Available on AWS

A significant amount of the potential use cases for quantum computing lies in the area of optimization. And people are working on a large number of different technologies including pure quantum, hybrid quantum/classical, and quantum-inspired approaches to provide solutions to these problems. (You can obtain GQI's recent report on Quantum Solver - Optimization to see a review of many of the different solutions currently available.)

Toshiba has been working on a solution called SQBM+ which uses a classical software algorithm known as the Simulated Bifurcation Machine (SBM) developed by Toshiba to implement a solver for quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problems based on the Ising model. A technical paper that describes the algorithm in more detail is available here. Toshiba's SBM is capable of handling up to 100,000 variables and can use one of two variants of the algorithm. The first is called the Ballistic Simulated Bifurcation Algorithm (bSB) which is a high-speed algorithm that can find a good solution within a short time and the second is called the Discrete Simulated Bifurcation Algorithm (dSB) which is a high-accuracy algorithm for finding a more accurate solution.

In June 2022, Toshiba made the SQBM+ available on Microsoft's Azure Cloud Platform and now they have also made it available on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace. Pricing for using the SQBM+ can range anywhere from $200 per hour of usage for Learning and Development to as much as $9,000 per month for high volume Business Standard usage. A limited free trial is available on both systems.

Additional information about SQBM+ is available on a web page here. A press release announcing the new availability of SQBM+ on AWS can be seen here and the press release announcing the available on Microsoft Azure is can be found here.

February 17, 2023