OTI Lumionics uses quantum computing to improve chemical simulation accuracy

March 25, 2019 | Case Study

OTI Lumionics offers cathode materials for auxiliary electrodes in OLED displays. For its materials development strategy, OTI initially developed quantum chemistry tools for chemical simulation. However, it soon began to look for ways to make those tools more scalable, work on larger molecules, and use fewer computing resources. To address these issues, OTI is exploring the use of quantum computing (QC) as a method for running chemical simulations. OTI is internally developing all of the software for its simulations and runs them on cloud hardware from vendors like Rigetti Computing and D-Wave Systems. The company claims that currently, QC hardware is not mature enough to handle a general-purpose materials discovery platform and requires a custom approach to interface directly with hardware vendors.

OTI told Lux Research that because all QC algorithms for quantum chemistry are quantum-classical hybrids (which use both types of computing), benchmarking runtime requires a highly optimized network and software stack to be useful. The company is gradually improving its stack, but until it can more accurately make meaningful comparisons between quantum and classical speeds, OTI is primarily focusing on improving the scalability of its algorithms as it moves from classical algorithms to quantum-classical hybrid algorithms.