AQUA@Home was a distributed computing

Distributed computing

Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems. A distributed system consists of multiple autonomous computers that communicate through a computer network. The computers interact with each other in order to achieve a common goal...

 project operated by D-Wave Systems

D-Wave Systems

D-Wave Systems, Inc. is a quantum computing company, based in Burnaby, British Columbia. On May 11, 2011, D-Wave System announced D-Wave One, labeled "the world's first commercially available quantum computer," and also referred to it as an adiabatic quantum computer using quantum annealing to...

 and running on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing

Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing

The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing is an open source middleware system for volunteer and grid computing. It was originally developed to support the SETI@home project before it became useful as a platform for other distributed applications in areas as diverse as mathematics,...

 (BOINC) software platform, it closed down in August 2011. Its goal was to predict the performance of superconducting

Superconductivity

Superconductivity is a phenomenon of exactly zero electrical resistance occurring in certain materials below a characteristic temperature. It was discovered by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes on April 8, 1911 in Leiden. Like ferromagnetism and atomic spectral lines, superconductivity is a quantum...

 adiabatic quantum computers

Adiabatic quantum computation

Adiabatic quantum computation relies on the adiabatic theorem to do calculations. First, a complex Hamiltonian is found whose ground state describes the solution to the problem of interest. Next, a system with a simple Hamiltonian is prepared and initialized to the ground state. Finally, the...

 on a variety of problems arising in fields ranging from materials science

Materials science

Materials science is an interdisciplinary field applying the properties of matter to various areas of science and engineering. This scientific field investigates the relationship between the structure of materials at atomic or molecular scales and their macroscopic properties. It incorporates...

 to machine learning

Machine learning

Machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence, is a scientific discipline concerned with the design and development of algorithms that allow computers to evolve behaviors based on empirical data, such as from sensor data or databases...

. It designed and analyzed quantum computing algorithm

Algorithm

In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning...

s, using Quantum Monte Carlo

Quantum Monte Carlo

Quantum Monte Carlo is a large class of computer algorithms that simulate quantum systems with the idea of solving the quantum many-body problem. They use, in one way or another, the Monte Carlo method to handle the many-dimensional integrals that arise...

 techniques.

AQUA@Home was the first BOINC project to provide multi-threaded applications. It was also the first project to deploy an OpenCL

OpenCL

OpenCL is a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of CPUs, GPUs, and other processors. OpenCL includes a language for writing kernels , plus APIs that are used to define and then control the platforms...

 test application under BOINC.

A list of papers resulting from AQUA@Home's computations is available online
.

See also

• Quantum computer
  Quantum computer
  A quantum computer is a device for computation that makes direct use of quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on data. Quantum computers are different from traditional computers based on transistors...
  
  
• D-Wave Systems
  D-Wave Systems
  D-Wave Systems, Inc. is a quantum computing company, based in Burnaby, British Columbia. On May 11, 2011, D-Wave System announced D-Wave One, labeled "the world's first commercially available quantum computer," and also referred to it as an adiabatic quantum computer using quantum annealing to...
  
  
• Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing
  Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing
  The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing is an open source middleware system for volunteer and grid computing. It was originally developed to support the SETI@home project before it became useful as a platform for other distributed applications in areas as diverse as mathematics,...