UNSW spinouts Silicon Quantum Computing and Diraq helped design the system architecture that will couple quantum processors with the electronic circuits of Nvidia in the next generation of supercomputers.
The tie-up was revealed on Wednesday as part of Nvidia ’s new open system architecture NVQLink, which connects the graphics processing units in some of the world’s fastest supercomputers with quantum processors.
Nvidia, which nudged a record valuation of US$5 trillion this week, developed the technology in partnership with more than a dozen quantum hardware companies and nine US supercomputing labs.
Quantum processors use qubits to process information in ways classical processors can not. But qubits are error prone and need complex correction and control algorithms to function.
It means the interconnects between a quantum processor and other super computing hardware must be ultra low-latency and high-throughput. Nvidia claims its new NVQLink provides this bridge and will unlock new breakthroughs in quantum computing.
“In the near future, every Nvidia GPU scientific supercomputer will be hybrid, tightly coupled with quantum processors to expand what is possible with computing,” Nvidia founder and chief executive Jensen Huang said.
“NVQLink is the Rosetta Stone connecting quantum and classical supercomputers — uniting them into a single, coherent system that marks the onset of the quantum-GPU computing era.”
SQC, which was spun out of UNSW in 2017 by Professor Michelle Simmons, said the new platform will allow it to perform real time orchestration of its quantum processing units with classical graphical processing and central processing units.
“NVIDIA’s commitment to opening up their resources to qubit builders is a crucial part of delivering commercial scale quantum computing,” Professor Simmons said.
“Quantum has progressed to an era of algorithms, logical qubits and classical-quantum integration.”
Researchers will be able to access NVQLink through its integration with the NVIDIA CUDA-Q, the chip giant’s software platform for applications that draw on CPUs and GPUs alongside quantum processors.
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