Riverlane and Rigetti Computing (Nasdaq: RGTI) today announced their participation in a project led by the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to explore the challenges of integrating a quantum computer with a large-scale, supercomputing centre.
Quantum computers will play an important role in the future of computing as they promise to solve problems that are traditionally impossible to tackle on even the world’s largest ‘classical’ supercomputers. As the performance of quantum computers improves, their integration with high-performance computing (HPC) to tackle complex computing challenges will become commonplace. The result will be the ability to solve problems for society that are unsolvable today.
To assess the viability of integrating quantum computers into HPC environments, the project partners will build the first-ever benchmarking suite (‘QStone’) for measuring the performance of a joint HPC + Quantum system. It will be run on ORNL’s Summit, the fifth fastest supercomputer in the world, developed by IBM in 2018. For the quantum components, researchers will use simulated hardware based on key elements of Riverlane’s ‘Quantum Error Correction Stack’, in particular its qubit control system which is already installed at the ORNL labs, and real remote hardware located at Rigetti’s headquarters in California.
For HPC systems to eventually reach maximum computational power, they will need to seamlessly integrate with error-corrected quantum computers. Building an early understanding of how quantum error correction technologies, integrated with quantum hardware, interacts with a HPC system will allow users to sooner achieve the full computational benefits of HPC-Quantum integration.
“This project will move us ahead in making quantum computing devices both more practical in general and more interoperable with HPC systems. The benchmarking will help us explore and identify early challenges associated with such integration which will benefit future research in this space. We are proud to be part of this exciting initiative and understand more about how our Quantum Error Correction Stack can work in tandem with a world-leading supercomputing centre.” said Marco Ghibaudi, VP of Engineering, Riverlane.
ORNL is among the leaders in advanced quantum research with a dedicated team of researchers and a network of commercial, academic and government partnerships. Their work covers various research efforts from developing and benchmarking scalable, fault-tolerant algorithms to designing quantum sensors.
Riverlane, Rigetti and ORNL (pictured above) will publish the results of the project, sharing the key learnings about interoperability issues and performance from interfacing early quantum devices with HPC-infrastructure. This will include key learnings about whether quantum computers should be installed on-site or can be successfully used through remote access.
“Integrating quantum processors with modern HPC is an important next step in the evolution of both quantum computing and HPC. Collaborating with ORNL and Riverlane to develop and test the integration of Rigetti quantum hardware into ORNL’s HPC systems could move us significantly closer to the deployment of the first quantum-enabled supercomputer” said Dr. Subodh Kulkarni, Rigetti CEO.
