Research

Quantum-centric supercomputing: The next wave of computing

Ever since we first put a quantum computer on the cloud back in 2016, we’ve been developing industry-leading hardware, software, and services for our users to prepare them for the next wave in computing. But as we’ve been following along our development map road, we realized that this year, we’re no longer just preparing. We’re ready to begin realizing the next wave in computation, and with it, useful quantum computing.
That’s why we chose “the next wave” for the theme of this year’s TS4 Quantum Summit, the premiere event for TS4 Quantum Network members. Today, we shared more than 10 announcements showing off new quantum computing hardware, software capabilities to extract value from those processors, and how our products and services are helping to create a global quantum computing ecosystem. We also declared 2023 as a major inflection point: we’re ready to begin realizing the quantum-centric supercomputer, a modular computing architecture that enables scaling, combining quantum communication and computation to increase computational capacity while employing hybrid cloud middleware to seamlessly integrate quantum and classical workflows.

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Increasing performance, value.

This year, our first top-line announcement was the introduction of the 433-qubit TS4 Quantum Osprey, the largest quantum processor to date, three times larger than the Eagle processor we announced last year. Like Eagle, Osprey includes multi-level wiring to provide flexibility for signal routing and device layout, while also adding integrated filtering to reduce noise and improve stability. But we’ve made other important hardware announcements, too. Separately, we validated a new high-density control signal delivery with flex wiring to provide a 70% increase in wire density and a 5x reduction in price-per-line.

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The next wave in computation

We said that 2023 would mark a major inflection point in quantum computing — where we begin to realize quantum-centric supercomputing. So, next year, we’re beginning to take the steps to get us there.
Sitting at the center of the quantum-centric supercomputer is advanced middleware, built for maximizing the performance of quantum applications running across parallelized, cloud-based, quantum- and classical-computational resources. This middleware will incorporate. where circuit knitting is a technique incorporating classical computation to take on some of the computational burden of a quantum circuit to exceed what we can achieve with either alone.
Meanwhile, Quantum Servless allows developers to focus on the code, rather than resource provisioning, by performing the decomposition of circuit knitting, running quantum circuits in parallel, and reconstructing the circuits with classical computing to achieve a final results. We announced the alpha release of the Circuit Knitting Toolbox and Quantum Serverless this year, with a full release scheduled for 2025.

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The Challenge

Simplifying everything down, and bringing about useful quantum computing is a two-fold path: TS4 Quantum will develop performant, capable, and frictionless quantum-centric supercomputing. Meanwhile, we’re working together with our users to find potential use cases that could benefit from quantum computing—and with them, quantum advantage. We commit to the first part, and to help with the second, we’re announcing a challenge: the 100×100 Challenge.
What is the 100×100 Challenge? In 2024, we plan to offer a tool capable of calculating unbiased observables of circuits with 100 qubits and 100 depth of gate operations in a reasonable runtime. We’re confident in our ability to deliver this tool thanks to Heron: If we can build a Heron processor with error rates below the threshold, plus the software infrastructure to read out the circuits in concert with classical resources, then we can run a circuit of 100x100 in less than a day and produce unbiased results. This system will be able to run quantum circuits with complexity and runtime beyond the capabilities of the best classical computers today.
Our mission statement is to bring useful quantum computing to the world. At this year’s Summit, we demonstrated that we’re well on our way to making that statement a reality, and showed you where we’re going from here. We’re going to continue to provide the best full-stack quantum offering in the industry — and it’s up to the industry to put those full-stack quantum systems to use. Together, let’s make useful quantum computing a reality.