PHILADELPHIA, PA — Comcast, Classiq, and AMD announced the completion of a joint trial using quantum algorithms and high-performance computing to improve network routing resilience and backup path identification across Comcast’s broadband network.
The companies said the trial focused on identifying independent backup paths for network sites during maintenance and change management to help prevent service disruptions if a second failure occurs while a site is offline.
Elad Nafshi, chief network officer for Comcast Connectivity and Platforms, said the company began the trials with Classiq last year to assess whether quantum software could address operational challenges in large-scale networks.
“Our results have shown that quantum computing for network optimization isn’t theoretical – it’s practical, scalable, and grounded in the needs of our customers,” Nafshi said.
The trial applied quantum algorithms alongside classical high-performance computing to determine whether unique backup paths could be identified in real time under complex change scenarios. As networks expand, the number of possible routing combinations increases exponentially, making such optimization problems computationally intensive.
According to the companies, the project combined runs on quantum hardware with GPU-accelerated simulations using AMD Instinct GPUs. The simulations were used to iterate and validate algorithm performance at qubit scales not yet achievable on current quantum hardware alone.
Classiq provided quantum software and engineering support for modeling and execution across both simulated and hardware environments, the companies said.
Nir Minerbi, co-founder and CEO of Classiq, said enterprise quantum research requires repeatable workflows that can operate across different computing backends.
“This collaboration demonstrates how teams can ideate, model complex optimization problems and then run them quickly and efficiently across different backends, including both GPU-accelerated simulation and quantum hardware, while keeping the work portable as the ecosystem evolves,” Minerbi said.
Madhu Rangarajan, corporate vice president of Compute and Enterprise AI Products at AMD, said the project reflects efforts to combine classical and quantum computing systems.
“This collaboration shows a real-world example of how accelerated simulation and quantum execution can co-exist to solve a problem that matters to network operations,” Rangarajan said.
More detailed results from the trial are available in a scholarly article authored by the research team and in a separate blog post for quantum developers, according to the companies.
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