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The German-American partnership will include joint research and expert training in the fields of quantum technologies and quantum algorithms and the mutual use of quantum hardware. Researchers on both sides will perform simulations on JSC high-performance computing (HPC) systems, and experiment with Google's quantum processors.

The announcement of the FZJ-Google partnership—made during a visit of German Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier to Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California—marks the next step in FZJ’s endeavours in playing a key role in the advancement of quantum computing.  Through JSC’s expertise in HPC and associated technologies, FZJ is already a key player in the initiative “Quantum Flagship”, funded by the European Commission.

Quantum computing is increasingly attracting interest from industry and scientific groups that use HPC for their research. Pilot users of quantum computing are primarily interested in testing whether available quantum computing technologies are suitable either today or in the foreseeable future for solving problems relevant to them.

While Google has been working on the development of quantum processors and quantum algorithms for years, the exploration of new technologies for quantum computers is a key research focus at Forschungszentrum Jülich. “Quantum computing promises unprecedented possibilities for important computing tasks such as quantum simulations in chemistry and materials science or optimization and machine learning,” explains Professor Thomas Lippert, Director at the Institute for Advanced Simulation at Forschungszentrum Jülich and Head of JSC. “The development of novel and efficient methods and algorithms that explicitly take advantage of such emerging disruptive computing architectures is a huge challenge and opportunity for all”.

“Hands-on workshops and spring schools will be organised at Forschungszentrum Jülich,” says Prof. Kristel Michielsen, head of JSC’s Quantum Information Processing research group. “The Jülich UNified Infrastructure for Quantum computing (JUNIQ), a European quantum computer user facility planned for the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), will be available for training industry professionals, and will be accessible in the cloud to European users.”

Further information

July 10, 2019