Recently, the Forschungszentrum Jülich Research Center in Germany launched Europe's first quantum computer with more than 5,000 qubits. The center said this is an important milestone in the development of quantum computers in Europe.
The super-quantum computer, built by Canadian quantum computing system supplier D-Wave, is the company's most computationally powerful machine to date and has been deployed outside the company's headquarters for the first time.
This is a Quantum annealing computer, essentially the same idea as the absolute heat particle calculation, which is designed to handle optimization and sampling problems. The advantage of the quantum annealing method is that its system stability is much higher than that of the quantum gate method.
D-Wave quantum annealing computer at the Ulich Research Center in Germany, picture from the Lich Research Center
With the help of this super quantum computer, as well as the remote cloud access D-Wave quantum system built at the Ulisch Research Center, the center is able to participate in the practical application of quantum computing at an early stage.
In order to realize commercial applications of quantum computing as early as possible, the center has established the Yulich Quantum Computing User Infrastructure (JUNIQ) to provide friendly access to quantum computing systems for different user groups in Europe.
"This is the beginning of a new era." Bettina Stark-Watzinger, Germany's Federal Minister for Education and Research, said, "Frankly, Germany and Europe need to catch up in the field of quantum computing, but we also know that this race has only just begun and there should be progress in the next few years." This is the goal of the German government. ”
Ensuring technological sovereignty in the field of quantum computing is one of the goals of the German government.
Canada, on the other side of the Atlantic, recently launched a $360 million quantum strategy. Although the current super-quantum computer is made in Canada, Watzinger hopes that future machines can be produced in their own countries: "The hardware and software of the future will also have to come from Germany and the European Union." Our goal is to play a leading role in the world and to ensure long-term technological sovereignty. ”
Quantum computers promise to revolutionize drug development, cybersecurity, financial modeling, weather forecasting, and many other fields, dealing with problems that classical computers can't solve.
Through the European High Performance Computing Consortium (EuroHPC) between the European Commission and member states, the EU plans to spend 7 billion euros on supercomputers over the next six years. Much of the money will be used to develop supercomputing infrastructure across Europe, and some of it will be used for quantum projects.
In the future, the Jürich Research Center will provide facilities for German and other EU researchers and companies to use JUNIQ to help them use quantum computers, from experimental systems and machine prototypes to the first production systems, and to develop algorithms and applications.