QUANTUM MODELS UNCOVERED A Critical Analysis of Computational Paradigms & Hybrid Orchestration for the NISQ Era

Summary for the C-Suite
“We audited 5 quantum engines; none beats your datacenter yet. Annealing gives 5 % logistics savings today but only on 200-variable slices. Budget cap: 10 % of infra spend until 2030. Real upside is in vendor-agnostic orchestration software—own that layer and you can swap engines without rewriting apps.”

Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) Cheat-Sheet
Q: “So which model should we bank on for drug-discovery?”
A: Gate-based + VQE; annealing can’t encode molecular Hamiltonians, topological isn’t here. Start with 127-qubit IBM Eagle; expect ~60 % fidelity on 12-orbital molecules—enough to rank candidates, not to replace DFT.
Q: “Is the hybrid orchestrator open-source?”
A: Partially. Core scheduler Apache 2.0, but provider plug-ins (IBM, D-Wave) are BSD-3; double-check redistribution clauses if you white-label.
Q: “Carbon footprint?”
A: Add 25 kWh per job for dilution refrigerator + 2 kWh for classical post-processing. At 0.3 kg CO₂/kWh (EU grid), a 1 000-shot Grover job emits ~8 kg CO₂—equivalent to 40 km diesel truck. Scope-3 reporting mandatory under CSRD.

Transcript