Nvidia taps Europe for QODA hybrid quantum computing platform

Technology News | July 13, 2022

By Nick Flaherty

quantum MPUs/MCUs

Nvidia has launched a computing platform that combines quantum and classical computing to speed up breakthroughs in quantum research and development across AI and high performance computing.

The Quantum Optimized Device Architecture (QODA) aims to make quantum computing more accessible by creating a coherent hybrid quantum-classical programming model, and Nvidia has initially teamed with leading quantum computing organisations in Europe.

It is working with German-Australian quantum startup Quantum Brilliance as well as UK-US quantum giant Quantinuum, Pasqal in France and the Julich Supercomputer Centre in Germany on QODA. This is an open, unified environment for today’s most powerful computers and quantum processors, improving scientific productivity and enabling greater scale in quantum research.

Quantum Brilliance

Quantum Brilliance’s software and applications team will build quantum emulators that mimic the nitrogen-vacancy centres in the company’s diamond-based quantum computers to enable efficient simulations of increasingly larger numbers of qubits on the QODA platform.

The company has recently installed its room temperature quantum computer in a supercomputer centre in Australia.

“Nvidia revolutionised high performance computing, and its QODA platform is a bold step forward in innovating the quantum industry as well,” said Dr Marcus Doherty, Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Quantum Brilliance.

“Our unique room-temperature diamond quantum microprocessor exploits this hybrid approach and will add a critical new element to the HPC and embedded computing landscape. It is essential that near-term quantum computing requires coupling of classical and quantum hardware to realize the technology’s potential. This allows sources of classical computing power such as a graphics processing unit (GPU) to be much closer to the quantum processing unit (QPU). The QODA platform provides the unifying framework for this vision.”

“An increasing number of researchers worldwide believe that scientific breakthroughs will occur with hybrid solutions combining classical computing with quantum computing,” said Tim Costa, director of HPC and Quantum Computing Products at Nvidia. “With the collaboration of innovative companies like Quantum Brilliance, we believe QODA will revolutionize quantum computing by giving many more developers fast access to the best tools for both worlds.”

“In addition to emulators, Quantum Brilliance is leveraging its qbOS software development kit to develop flagship applications focused on massive parallelisation of quantum computers for molecular simulations, as well as edge applications for signal processing such as speech-to-text conversion. The QODA platform will accelerate the progress of these applications and enable customers and partners to assess their performance,” said Dr Mark Mattingley-Scott, General Manager for Quantum Brilliance in Europe.

Jülich

“This helps bring quantum computing closer to the HPC and AI communities,” said Kristel Michielsen, who manages the Jülich Unified Infrastructure for Quantum Computing (JUNIQ) near Cologne in Germany.

“We can’t go on with today’s classical computers alone because they consume so much energy, and they can’t solve some problems,” she said. “But paired with quantum computers that won’t consume as much energy, I believe there may be the potential to solve some of our most complex problems.”

Several prototype quantum computers are now available, but none is powerful or dependable enough to tackle commercially relevant jobs yet.

“For a long time, we’ve had a vision of hybrid systems as the only way to get practical quantum computing — linked to today’s classical HPC systems, quantum computers will give us the best of both worlds,” she said.

In addition to its current analog quantum system, Jülich plans next year to install a neutral atom quantum computer from Paris-based Pasqal. It’s also been running quantum simulations on classical systems such as its JUWELS Booster, which uses over 3,700 Nvidia A100 Tensor Core GPUs.

“The GPU version of our universal quantum-computer simulator, called JUQCS, has given us up to 49x speedups compared to jobs running on CPU clusters — this work uses almost all the system’s GPU nodes and relies heavily on its InfiniBand network,” she said.

QODA acts like a software bridge. With a function call, developers can choose to run their quantum jobs on GPUs or quantum processors. The high-level language will support every kind of quantum computer, and its compiler will be available as open-source software. And it’s supported by quantum system and software providers including Pasqal, Xanadu, QC Ware and Zapata.

Quantinuum is also partnering with Nvidia “to program and develop the next generation of hybrid quantum-classical applications,” said Alex Chernoguzov, chief engineer at Quantinuum.

www.nvidia.com; www.quantumbrilliance.com; www.quantinuum.com