SC Quantathon v3: Predicting Quantum Runtimes at Clemson

This past weekend, Quantum Rings had the opportunity to sponsor SC Quantathon v3 at Clemson University!

A New Home at Clemson

SC Quantathon is South Carolina's quantum hackathon. SC Quantum, which put on the first two editions, has officially handed the reins to Clemson to continue the tradition — and the Clemson Quantum Club did a great job with its first-ever hosting of the event. From September 25–27 at the Watt Family Innovation Center, teams of students worked for 24 hours on real-world challenges written by industry sponsors, then presented their solutions to a panel of judges. Quantum Rings was honored to be one of the event's two challenge sponsors, with CEO Bob Wold and Omar Armbruster on site all weekend mentoring teams and judging the final presentations.

The Quantum Rings Challenge

Our challenge tasked hackers with a problem we care deeply about: analyzing QASM files and building machine learning models to predict the runtime of quantum circuits on our simulator without actually executing them.

This is more than a hackathon exercise. Accurately estimating how long a circuit will take to simulate — from the circuit structure alone — is a key piece of bringing simulation to the Open Quantum platform, where users need to know what a job will cost and how long it will run before they submit it.

We were thrilled to see so many strong teams take on the challenge, and the results spoke for themselves: the best models were comparable to the best results we've been able to produce through other approaches. That's impressive work for 24 hours.

Congratulations to The Wolfpack

After a long day and night of hacking, The Wolfpack — Andrew Cox, Jaber Ibne Taher, Caroline Taylor, Murat Önem, and Robert Maguire — took home the win for the Quantum Rings Challenge. Congratulations on an outstanding solution!

Thank You, Clemson

As much fun as it is to watch the students hack, it's equally fun to spend the weekend with the other mentors, sponsors, and judges — this year including key people from universities, national labs, and companies across South Carolina. A big thank you to Nathan Jones and the entire Clemson Quantum Club for putting together such a great event, and to fellow mentors and judges Larry Deschaine, Rong Ge, and Bill Yang.

We're always excited by the innovation that comes from the students, and we're just as excited to see how this event flourishes in the years ahead. Thank you to all of the hackers who spent their weekend taking on our challenge — we're looking forward to seeing where you take these ideas next.