SAS brings quantum computing to industry to unlock optimisation and cut costs

Quantum computing is a term we hear, and is based on the physics of quantum mechanics. It builds on the strange properties of quantum particles like superposition and entaglement to solve problems that are simply far too computationally intractible for classical computers. For those of us who understand bits and bytes it can be perplexing how Quantum bits - or qubits - can exist in both 0 and 1 states simultaneously and explore multiple scenarios simultaneously.

Whether you can get your head around the physics or not, the reality is quantum computing exists and is no longer merely the stuff of academia and research. It's not worlds away. Research by SAS indicates over 60% of respondents from a survey of 500 business leaders across industries are actively investing or exploring opportunities in quantum AI. Yet, the same leaders cited critical barriers to adoption - high cost (30%), lack of understanding (35%), and uncertainty around what the practical applications really are (31%).

SAS concluded while interest is on the rise, organisations need a clear roadmap and guide to be in a position to genuinely leverage this technology. SAS, with its almost five decades of expertise in applying number crunching to business problems, says it is in strong position to give that roadmap and guide, and, in fact, already has real-world success in applying quantum computing to organisations like Procter & Gamble.

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“For decades SAS has helped organisations across a host of industries find better answers faster and improve business decisions through data and AI. With the emergence of quantum technologies, companies can analyze more data than ever and achieve amazingly fast answers to very complex questions involving myriad variables,” said SAS principal quantum architect Bill Wisotsky. “Our goal is to make quantum research simple and intuitive for our customers and help them apply it to their business.”

SAS is working on quantum computing in collaboration with partners, that includes D-Wave Quantum Inc., the world's first commercial supplier of quantum computers. SAS CTO Bryan Harris explained to iTWire that while quantum computing can have very high costs, D-Wave helps bring that down by its use of quantum annealing systems. "Annealing" here has a direct analogy to traditional annealing used in metallurgy where materials are heated and then slowly cooled to achieve a stable state. In the quantum case, qubits are mapped to the solution space and begin in a state of high energy and randomness. A magnetic field is applied as the "temperature" control, allowing the system to explore the solution space and find the lowest energy state, that is, the most optimal or near-optimal.

SAS is also collaborating with IBM, a leader in superconducting quantum computing, and QuEra Computing Inc., a leader in neutral-atom quantum computing.

SAS is a member of both the IBM Quantum Network and the QuEra Quantum Alliance Partner Program, all with the aims of solving the world's most challenging computational problems.

While much talk about quantum computing today is confusing and cloaked in hype, and oft-considered years away, SAS has achieved real results already and is continuing to experiment with interfacing quantum annealing technology directly through SAS Viya Workbench.

During the annual SAS Innovate convention, held this week at the Orlando Hilton, Bryan Harris took the stage with Procter & Gamble (P&G) director of digital innovation Krista Comstock to reveal the company's joint achievement in quantum.

The P&G / SAS relationship is a long one, with P&G trusting SAS to drive analytics since 1980. Work on optimisation began in the 2000s, working on formulated products, assembled products, capacity planning and multi-line scheduling, and, since 2024, quantum AI.

The challenge, Comstock explained, was how to optimise the manufacture of different products, across equipment lines that have a series of ingredient tanks. The company has a wide range of variations in its product range - "look at Tide detergents or Pantene shampoos," Comstock said - with strict rules of what can, and can not, mix. Thus, P&G sought help from SAS how to identify the optimal number of assignments across different tanks to ensure certain products never mix. "It's a huge scale with so many variations," she said.

Harris provided the analogy, "Imagine you have a five burner stove with only four pots and pans. You need to make 10 dishes with many different ingredients. You may need to re-use pots and pans without cleaning and must avoid cross-contamination to protect people with allergies."

In P&G's case there are handful of mixing tanks with hundreds of ingredients. In fact, the number of combinations across the mixing tanks comes to an enormous 10 to the power of 114, more than the number of atoms in the universe (or "the number of jobs on my honey-do list," Harris joked.)

P&G's work to optimise a subset of products using traditional computing approaches took around six hours for a result. This did indeed give a quality, feasible result, but could it be faster?

In comes quantum: the same problem yielded results in simply two minutes. This showed the immense speed of quantum computing. However, while the results were near-optimal, they were not always the best.

Here, SAS adopted a hybrid approach using quantum computing for the first pass, then applying traditional solving techniques to the quantum results to end up with the best configuration. The total run-time was 12 minutes.

Applying quantum computing astoundingly shrunk the run time to a mere 1/33rd without using quantum. Here, Harris says, is where quantum computing excels - optimisation challenges, such as the classic "travelling salesman" computer science conundrum. And sure, there is a lot of mathematics involved, but if any company knows maths it is SAS. The name derives from its original moniker "statistical analysis system" and was co-founded by still-current CEO Dr. Jim Goodnight, who earned a PhD in statistics from North Caroline State University where he also served on faculty after working on none other than the Apollo project. Yes, the SAS heritage even dates back to helping land man on the moon and bringing him back home safely. SAS has been applying robust, unchanging, mathematical and statistical principles to industry for almost half a century. While SAS is ever eking greater performance out of increasing advances in compute power, the underlying principles are axiomatic and unchanging.

With the latest advance in compute power, Harris said, "quantum is not 10 years from now; it's right here and now, and we're using it."

P&G's outlay on quantum computing is commercially confidential but Harris noted the costs of quantum annealing technology is lower than that of other quantum approaches, and there is also a huge opportunity benefit. Not only is the problem solved sooner, but the faster delivery of insights helps P&G rethink its formulations sooner, faster, and provides inspiration and action for new ways to transform data.

SAS is looking for more opportunities for quantum computing, Harris said, explaining it can be applied not only to optimisation, but to responding in near real-time to how retail customer demands change daily, even social media and TikTok trends.

Nevertheless, SAS has proven undeniably that quantum computing is real, that it is applicable right now, and that it has the skill and expertise to apply it to your real business problems reducing your time to actionable insights.