The Jülich Supercomputing Center has acquired a D-Wave quantum computer, making it the first high-performance computing center in the world to own a D-Wave Advantage system. Synergy with the Jupiter supercomputer is high on the agenda.
In Germany, the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) announces the purchase of a quanum computer from D-Wave. The D-Wave Advantage system will be the first of its kind to be owned by an HPC center. The device will end up at the Jülich UNified Infrastructure for Quantum Computing (JUNIQ), which is part of JSC.
JSC thus intends to seek new synergy with Jupiter. Jupiter will be Europe’s first exascale supercomputer, and will also be raised at the JSC. The goal is to advance research on AI and quantum optimization, among other things.
The D-Wave Advantage is an annealing quantum computer with more than 5,000 qubits and fifteen-way connectivity. It is the largest quantum computing system in the world and the first in Europe with this capacity. JSC will upgrade the system to D-Wave’s next-generation Advantage2 quantum processor in the future. This upgrade should provide improved performance by doubling coherence, increased connectivity and a 40 percent power increase, among other things.
Successful research
JUNIQ and its scientific users have previously conducted research with D-Wave’s quantum technology. In 2022, researchers at Lund University, in collaboration with JSC, used a D-Wave quantum computer to study protein folding. Their results were published in Physical Review Research.
In 2024, scientists from JSC and Slovenia proved that an annealing quantum computer can directly simulate microscopic interactions of electrons in material, which was published in Nature Communications. Recently, D-Wave was combined with a supercomputer to analyze quantum physics processes during the formation of the universe. Its results appeared in Nature Physics.
With the integration of the D-Wave quantum computer and its future link to Jupiter, Forschungszentrum Jülich aims to take the use of quantum technology in Europe to the next level.
No general quantum computer
D-Wave’s system is a true quantum computer, but the system is built according to a very focused architecture and consequently can only be used for specific problems. Thus, the D-Wave Advantage computer is not a general quantum computer. Whereas researchers with such a general system are more likely to develop a quantum CPU, you could see D-Wave’s solution as a directed quantum accelerator.