The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), in partnership with technology company Quantum Brilliance, has made the first major steps towards the advance of quantum computers for scientific discovery with the installation of a Quantum Brilliance computer system at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility.
Lab staff will utilise ORNL’s first on-site, commercial quantum computer cluster to explore ways to integrate this emerging technology into classical high-performance computing infrastructures and tap its potential for massive computational power gains.
“By hosting a Quantum Brilliance system on site, we’ll be maturing the real mechanics of hybrid computing — co scheduling, end to end performance tuning, data and workflow orchestration, workforce development and more — so we can eventually move HPC-quantum integration from a conceptual pilot to a fully embedded capability within leadership computing,” said Ashley Barker, OLCF Program Director of ORNL. “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.”
Quantum computing — a technology still in its formative stages compared to classical supercomputers such as the OLCF’s exascale-class Frontier — utilises quantum bits, or qubits, to perform calculations. Unlike binary bits used by classical computers, qubits don’t use 1s and 0s to encode information. Instead, they use a quantum superposition to exponentially increase processing power for certain kinds of problems, including quantum mechanics. Last year, the OLCF published a paper in Future Generation Computing Systems proposing a framework to integrate quantum and classical computing, reflecting its commitment to hybrid computing research.
“This hybrid system provides ORNL researchers with a new platform to explore advanced computing methods, including parallelized quantum algorithms, that support tight integration with HPC systems. Our research into quantum-HPC integration is a fundamental part of the lab strategy to realize the next-generation of leadership-class computing systems,” said Travis Humble, Director of the DOE’s Quantum Science Center, also located at ORNL.
Quantum Brilliance is based in Australia and Germany and specialises in the design, fabrication and manufacturing of small, ruggedised quantum devices. The company’s quantum system is a hybrid full-stack platform that integrates a quantum processing unit, or QPU, alongside graphics processing unit, or GPU, and CPU components, allowing it to support parallel and hybrid quantum-classical workflows.
ORNL’s first on-site, commercial quantum computer cluster will be used by OLCF staff to explore ways to integrate this emerging technology into classical high-performance computing ecosystems.
“Our collaboration with ORNL marks a significant milestone for Quantum Brilliance and the future of quantum computing and is the result of years of close collaboration with Travis Humble and the incredible team at ORNL. Together, we are working towards the vision of integrating our GPU-sized diamond quantum systems with ORNL’s world-class HPC infrastructure,” said Mark Luo, CEO, Quantum Brilliance. “This effort demonstrates what is possible and paves the way for large-scale deployments globally, with hundreds of thousands, potentially millions, of systems. This is about so much more than just hardware — it is about building a future where quantum and classical systems collaborate on an unprecedented scale.”
Installed in the OLCF’s Advanced Computing Ecosystem testbed — a data centre sandbox for experimenting with new computer technologies — the cluster of three Quantum Development Kits, or QDKs, features three parallelised QPUs for a total of six qubits. Although most current quantum computer systems are prone to high error rates, with physically large architectures that require extreme cooling to retain quantum coherence, the diamond-based QPUs used by Quantum Brilliance operate at room temperature in a relatively small package.
“Most qubit technologies are vulnerable to decoherence caused by heat and electromagnetic noise, which is why most of them require cryogenic temperatures or complicated laser and vacuum systems to keep the qubits stable. In our case, the use of diamond as a host material changes the equation entirely,” said Andreas Sawadsky, Technology and Innovation Manager, Quantum Brilliance. “Diamond is extremely hard, so even at room temperature and atmospheric pressure, there isn’t sufficient thermal energy to generate the vibrations that would typically disrupt qubit coherence.
“This intrinsic stability allows our QPUs to function without the complexity and cost of cryogenics, laser and vacuum systems. This allowed us to engineer a revolutionary QPU solution that operates efficiently at room temperature while dramatically reducing size, weight and power consumption.”
In its collaboration with the OLCF, Quantum Brilliance ultimately seeks to explore a future in HPC when QPUs can be used to accelerate certain tasks just as GPUs do today.
“We expect the OLCF will use our system to test different architectures and methods for hybrid and parallel quantum computing, including demonstrating applications in computational chemistry and machine learning that benefit from parallelization,” said Dr. Marcus Doherty, CTO, Quantum Brilliance. “This collaboration will help inform the engineering pathway to the future of HPC where there are hundreds of parallel quantum computers integrated with classical computers.”
With operations in Australia and Germany, Quantum Brilliance’s mission is to enable the mass deployment of quantum technology, enabling its integration into everyday devices and high-performance computing systems. Quantum Brilliance has attracted world-leading scientific and commercial talent in Australia and Europe. Its international partnerships extend into North America, Europe and the Asia Pacific, and include governments, supercomputing centres, research organisations, and industry partners.
