Recent tests performed on the D-Wave Two quantum annealer have revealed no
clear evidence of speedup over conventional silicon-based technologies. Here,
we present results from classical parallel-tempering Monte Carlo simulations
combined with isoenergetic cluster moves of the archetypal benchmark problem-an
Ising spin glass-on the native chip topology. Using realistic uncorrelated
noise models for the D-Wave Two quantum annealer, we study the best-case
resilience, i.e., the probability that the ground-state configuration is not
affected by random fields and random-bond fluctuations found on the chip. We
thus compute classical upper-bound success probabilities for different types of
disorder used in the benchmarks and predict that an increase in the number of
qubits will require either error correction schemes or a drastic reduction of
the intrinsic noise found in these devices. We outline strategies to develop
robust, as well as hard benchmarks for quantum annealing devices, as well as
any other computing paradigm affected by noise.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure
