Finnish quantum computing company launches European consortium to accelerate commercialization
23/02/2021
By David Schwartz
Published: February 23rd, 2021
As part of an ongoing push to establish European strength in the fast-developing quantum computing arena, Finland’s IQM — a leading quantum computing company — is launching a consortium that includes some of Europe’s leading quantum start-ups, industry leaders, research centers, supercomputing centers, and universities.
The consortium aims to accelerate commercialization through an innovative co-design concept. focused on application-specific quantum processors, which IQM sees as bridge to commercially viable quantum computers. This project will run for four years, with a goal of developing a a 54-qubit quantum processor. Germany is providing significant initial funding for the effort.
The project is intended to support the European FET Flagship project “EU OpenSuperQ,” which is aimed at building a quantum information processing system of up to 100 qubits. By deploying digital-analog quantum computing (DAQC), the new consortium provides an additional angle to the OpenSuperQ project and widens its scope.
“The grant from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany is a huge recognition of our unique co-design approach for quantum computers. Last year when we established our office in Munich, this was one of our key objectives. The concept allows us to become a system integrator for full-stack quantum computers by bringing together all the relevant players. As Europe’s leading start-up in quantum technologies, this gives us confidence to further invest in Germany and other European countries,” said IQM’s CEO Dr. Jan Goetz.
“DAQC is an important project for Germany and Europe. It enables us to take a leading role in the area of quantum technologies. It also allows us to bring quantum computing into one of the prime academic supercomputing centres to more effectively work on the important integration of high-performance computing and quantum computing. We are looking forward to a successful collaboration,” said Prof. Dr Martin Schulz, from consortium member Leibniz Supercomputing Centre.
Source: HPC Wire