Xanadu, Rolls-Royce, and Riverlane Finalize Jet Engine Airflow Simulation Project
Xanadu, Rolls-Royce, and Riverlane have completed their collaborative project on applications relevant to modeling jet engine airflow by utilizing quantum computing. By integrating Xanadu's PennyLane software and Riverlane's quantum algorithms, the project enabled Rolls-Royce to achieve a reduction in simulation runtimes by orders of magnitude-shrinking calculation costs from weeks to less than an hour, unlocking new prototyping opportunities for the aerospace industry. Simulating airflow in jet engines is a notorious bottleneck for classical supercomputers. The many unknown variables that have to be solved in a large system of linear equations result in prohibitively long simulation runtimes. However, quantum computers are well-suited for these systems and are poised to offer a significant advantage: quantum computers can potentially accelerate the simulation time exponentially, leading to much faster design processes for large systems.
