Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is working with a company called Quantum Brilliance on the integration of quantum systems and high-performance computing (HPC) to tackle scientific concerns.

Australia-based Quantum Brilliance (QB) was founded in 2019 out of research conducted at the Australian National University. The company uses diamond-based hardware to produce room-temperature quantum systems, and is backed by funding from the Australian Capital Territory government.

This alliance with ORNL aims to develop a joint platform to combine quantum with HPC by exploring the on-premises integration of QB's quantum compute cluster into classical hardware systems deployed at ORNL's facilities in Tennessee.

The alliance aims to pioneer new computational methods that exploit parallel and hybrid computing, plus the software tools to allow users to implement those methods. Parallel in this instance means multiple quantum processors working together, while hybrid is the quantum and classical combination.

QB anticipates that the project will glean knowledge leading to the design of better hybrid compute systems, along with the infrastructure tools and know-how to manage them.

ORNL Quantum Science Center Director Dr Travis Humble claimed that parallel quantum computing holds transformative potential for both scientific discovery and industrial applications that require HPC.

"Partnering with Quantum Brilliance allows us to explore effective integration with our existing HPC systems, paving the way for groundbreaking advancements that will inform the design of future HPC infrastructure," he trilled.

Quantum Brilliance's technology is based on diamond quantum computers, which the company claims can operate in ambient conditions with comparatively simple control systems.

Each processor node in one of its clusters is composed of a nitrogen-vacancy center, which is actually a defect in the diamond comprising a "substitutional" nitrogen atom adjacent to a vacancy, plus a cluster of nuclear spins.

According to QB's whitepaper (available to download), the nuclear spins act as the qubits, while the nitrogen-vacancy centers act as "quantum buses" that mediate the initialization and readout of the qubits, plus communications for multi-qubit operations. Operation is controlled via a combination of radio frequency, microwave, optical and magnetic fields, which doesn't sound comparatively simple to us.

ORNL announced a study last month involving more than a dozen scientists to examine potential strategies to integrate quantum computing with the world's most powerful supercomputing systems in the pursuit of science.

This does not explicitly mention Quantum Brilliance, but does refer to nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond as one of the hardware technologies it is investigating.

It also mentions a number of HPC resources available at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), including the Frontier supercomputer, its predecessor Summit, and the Advanced Computing Ecosystem (ACE) testbed. The latter is described as a "centralized sandbox" for deploying diverse computing and data resources.

Quantum Brilliance told The Register that it had been picked for this project by ORNL because of a shared vision for integrating quantum accelerators with classical hardware.

"Unlike other quantum systems that require extensive cooling, high vacuum, or precise laser setups, our compact quantum accelerators operate in ambient conditions, making them ideal for deployment alongside classical processors like CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs," said Florian Preis, the company's Head of Quantum Software & Applications.

QB is also an early adopter of ORNL's eXtreme-scale Accelerator programming framework (XACC), which is designed specifically for hybrid quantum-classical computing architectures, he added.

The project is primarily focused on exploring applications in chemistry, optimization, and machine learning, Preis said, with an initial emphasis on chemistry.

"Our approach across these domains is centered on a 'divide and conquer' strategy. For example, in our chemistry application, we plan to explore methods that break down larger molecules into smaller fragments," he explained.

"By distributing the calculations of these fragments across multiple quantum accelerators, we can effectively parallelize the process, which aligns with our broader vision of massively parallel quantum computing."

CEO Mark Luo claimed the union with ORNL represents a step in bringing quantum computing to practical applications.

"By integrating the world's first cluster of room-temperature QPUs with ORNL's leading HPC infrastructure, we aim to demonstrate the benefits of parallel quantum computing. This is a critical milestone towards achieving massively parallelized quantum accelerators, which we believe will be the preferred architecture in HPC centres," he said.

The Register's APAC editor Simon Sharwood spoke to Quantum Brilliance's former CEO about its exotic hardware back in 2021. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/09/06/ornl_quantum_brilliance/