Quantum Brilliance processors installed at Oak Ridge facility in “the first big steps” towards quantum computing for scientific discovery

Australian/German business Quantum Brilliance has had three of its quantum processor units installed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL) first on-site, commercial quantum computer cluster.

QB bills itself a world leader in mass-deployable, room temperature diamond-based quantum technology. According to a statement from the company on Wednesday, the new deployment at the US Department of Energy-sponsored R&D centre at Tennessee will see lab staff “explore ways to integrate this emerging technology into classical high-performance computing infrastructure”, and represents “the first big steps in the advance of quantum computers for scientific discovery”.

QB CEO Mark Luo said the announcement followed “years of close collaboration” with ORNL. 

“Together, we are working towards the vision of integrating our GPU-sized diamond quantum systems with ORNL’s world-class HPC infrastructure,” said Luo.  

The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s Program Director, Ashley Barker, added that the system would help mature “the real mechanics of hybrid computing — co‑scheduling, end‑to‑end performance tuning, data and workflow orchestration, workforce development and more” to move such computing from a conceptual pilot to a “fully embedded capability within leadership computing”.

Said Barker: “Leveraging the potential power of quantum computing in a hybrid ecosystem is important to the nation and aligns with ORNL’s mission of boosting innovation, energy, competitiveness and national security.” 

The cluster includes three Quantum Development Kits, or QDKs, with three parallelised quantum processing units “for a total of six qubits.” 

Quantum Brilliance has Australian sites at Canberra and Melbourne and is focussed on the design, fabrication and manufacturing of small, ruggedised quantum devices, which use synthetic diamonds.

Among its investors are the state government investment vehicle Breakthrough Victoria and the federal government's National Reconstruction Fund. The NRF announced a $13 million investment last December, as part of a Series A funding round and in support of an Australian quantum diamond foundry.    

Picture: supplied

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