(v.l.) Sales director Any Mason and CEO Vern Brownell (D-Wave), Prof. Kristel Michielsen and Prof. Thomas Lippert (JSC), Prof. Wolfgang Marquardt, CEO of Forschungszentrum Jülich, Annette Storsberg, State Secretary from the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Culture and Science. Copyright: Forschungszentrum Jülich / Ralf-Uwe Limbach
Today D-Wave Systems announced that it will house its first European Leap quantum cloud-based system outside of North America at the Jülich Supercomputing Center in Germany. The system marks the cornerstone of the new Jülich UNified Infrastructure for Quantum computing (JUNIQ) lab designed to offer practically usable quantum computers to researchers in Germany and throughout Europe. Forschungszentrum Jülich and their government and academic customers will access the system via D-Wave’s Leap quantum cloud service. European business customers can also purchase access to the D-Wave Leap service and systems, including the Leap system located at Jülich.
Long known for its multi-disciplinary approach and commitment to real-world applications, Forschungszentrum Jülich is a large-scale national research facility in the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers. By conducting research on the global challenges currently facing society, their scientific and engineering research is inspired by the notion of utilization with a view to application development. Jülich will benefit from the mid-2020 release of the Advantage quantum system, accelerating their work by providing Leap quantum cloud access to a processor with the new, highly connected Pegasus topology, lower noise, and increased qubit count. D-Wave’s Leap cloud service will also feature expanded hybrid software and tools available in Leap’s Ocean SDK.
At Forschungszentrum Jülich we help to solve highly complex questions from science and industry with high social relevance. We are leaders in the use of supercomputers in simulation, Big Data and AI,” explains Prof. Wolfgang Marquardt, CEO, Forschungszentrum Jülich. “The development and use of quantum computers is a completely new and major step into the future of information technology, which we now take with the opening of our new service-oriented infrastructure JUNIQ.”
Business customers in Europe can today access the D-Wave 2000Q through Leap and will benefit from the ongoing innovations that D-Wave continues to put into the cloud as the company gets closer to the mid-2020 release of Advantage. With the new European Leap site, customers will be able to choose to run their quantum and hybrid applications on any Leap system, including the Leap Advantage quantum system located at Jülich. In addition, government and academic customers will be able to choose to either directly access Leap through D-Wave or benefit from the guidance of Jülich experts as they develop quantum algorithms and applications.
While Forschungszentrum Jülich Supercomputing Center is a new customer for D-Wave, the organization is well respected for their deep quantum expertise and is known for their comprehensive work on the technology readiness assessment of quantum computing platforms,” said Vern Brownell, CEO, D-Wave. “Customers worldwide have been asking us to bring the D-Wave technologies to their regions. This announcement furthers our expansion into Europe and benefits industry and science by aligning the latest in quantum computing technologies with Julich’s deep quantum expertise. Together, we’ll bring practical quantum application development to Europe.”
Today, D-Wave’s customers have built more than 150 early applications in areas as diverse as financial modeling, airline scheduling, election modeling, quantum chemistry simulation, automotive design, preventative healthcare, logistics, and more. Many users have also developed software tools that simplify application development. These existing applications and tools, and the vibrant user community, give developers a wealth of examples to learn from and build upon.
