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Benchmark Results

qufin includes a comprehensive benchmark suite comparing classical and quantum implementations.

Running Benchmarks

# All benchmarks
python benchmarks/run_all.py

# Individual suites
python benchmarks/classical_comparison.py
python benchmarks/quantum_scaling.py
python benchmarks/quantum_advantage.py

Results are saved to benchmarks/results/ as JSON and Markdown.

Classical Performance

Black-Scholes Pricing

Method N Time (s) Notes
qufin BS analytical 1 ~95 us Matches numpy to machine precision
numpy vectorized 10,000 ~1 ms Vectorized over spot prices
qufin loop 10,000 ~1.3 s Per-object overhead; use vectorized for batch

Monte Carlo Convergence

Paths Time (s) Rel Error vs BS
10,000 0.4 ms ~0.4%
100,000 4 ms ~0.2%
1,000,000 39 ms ~0.06%

Error scales as \(O(1/\sqrt{N})\) as expected.

Portfolio Optimization Scaling

Method 10 assets 50 assets 100 assets 200 assets
Mean-Variance (CVXPY) 12 ms 14 ms 23 ms 81 ms
Risk Parity 69 ms 191 ms 800 ms 5.1 s
HRP 1.2 ms 3.2 ms 6.8 ms 16 ms
scipy SLSQP 0.9 ms 3.5 ms 10 ms 72 ms

Quantum Scaling

QUBO Build Time

QUBO matrix construction scales as \(O(N^2)\):

Encoding 10 assets 50 assets 100 assets 200 assets
One-hot 0.1 ms 1.2 ms 5 ms 17 ms
Binary (3-bit) 1.8 ms 59 ms

Exhaustive Solver

Exponential scaling (reference optimal solutions):

Assets Qubits Time States Evaluated
10 10 14 ms 1,024
14 14 209 ms 16,384
18 18 3.4 s 262,144
20 20 14.1 s 1,048,576

QAOA Performance

Wall-clock time for QAOA with COBYLA optimizer (50 iterations):

Assets p=1 X p=1 XY-ring p=2 XY-ring p=3 XY-ring
4 8.1 s 6.1 s 12.2 s 12.4 s
8 8.9 s 5.8 s 13.6 s 13.1 s
12 8.8 s 4.7 s 10.0 s 13.1 s

Key finding: XY-ring mixer consistently finds better solutions than X mixer, especially at higher \(p\).

Circuit Depth (per mixer layer)

Qubits X Mixer XY-Ring XY-Full
4 5 35 45
8 5 65 97
12 5 93 145
16 5 121 193

Quantum Advantage Assessment

Honest Assessment

There is no quantum advantage on current NISQ hardware for any finance application. qufin's value is providing quantum-ready infrastructure that delivers competitive classical results today.

When Will Quantum Help?

Application Theoretical Speedup Hardware Required Estimated Timeline
Option Pricing (QAE) Quadratic (\(1/\epsilon\) vs \(1/\epsilon^2\)) ~100+ logical qubits 2030+
Portfolio (QAOA) Unproven ~1000+ logical qubits 2030-2035
Risk (VaR/CVaR) Quadratic ~50+ logical qubits 2028-2032

qufin's Value Proposition

  1. Today: Production-grade classical implementations competitive with industry tools
  2. Near-term: Noise-aware quantum algorithms validated on NISQ hardware
  3. Future: Same codebase scales to fault-tolerant quantum hardware
  4. Always: Honest benchmarks — no overclaiming quantum advantage