Overview
- Researchers from Cleveland Clinic, IBM and RIKEN used two IBM Heron quantum processors with the Fugaku and Miyabi-G supercomputers to model protein–drug complexes as large as 12,635 atoms, about 40 times the prior record.
- The hybrid setup sent fragment-level quantum calculations from the two quantum machines to the supercomputers in a back-and-forth run that lasted over 100 hours.
- The simulations produced estimates of the molecules’ lowest energy states that the team says match the accuracy of some standard methods, and they report the workflow was likely faster than an all-classical run.
- External experts praised the scale and practicality of the experiment yet cautioned that a clear, provable quantum advantage for this approach has not been established.
- The group also reports sharp gains in part of the workflow over recent months, including up to a 210-fold accuracy improvement, pointing to rapid progress that could aid early drug discovery.