D-Wave Establishes Base in Europe
A quantum computing company from British Columbia, Canada, is establishing a presence in Europe through a partnership with a major research center. D-Wave recently announced plans to establish its first quantum cloud-based system outside of North America at the Jülich Supercomputing Center (JSC), within the Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ) in Germany. FZJ is a large-scale national research facility with a focus on developing practical applications to address global challenges.
Through the partnership, developers, forward-thinking businesses, academic institutions and government will be able to access D-Wave’s innovative tools and services, including the Advantage™ quantum system and Leap™ quantum cloud service. Advantage is a quantum annealing system and will have double the number of qubits (processing power) of the current D-Wave 2000QTM system and significantly more connectivity between the qubits. Leap is a cloud-based service that provides real-time access to quantum computers, offering open-source development tools, interactive demos, educational resources, knowledge base articles and a growing quantum community.
Quantum computing can address problems in numerous industries. For example, Airbus has used D-Wave’s quantum computers to perform system fault diagnosis which could in the future allow them to improve their aircraft designs. Volkswagen is also using quantum computers for applications like autonomous driving, traffic control and battery development.
Bringing D-Wave to JSC and establishing quantum computing capability is part of a larger European strategy to enhance modular supercomputing, which combines individual modules for better flexibility, scaleability and customizability. The deal was preceded by a visit from the Helmholtz Association of Research Centres to B.C. in September 2017, which included meetings with the University of British Columbia (UBC), one-on-one meetings with D-Wave’s President, and a roundtable meeting with the B.C. government and trade and investment representatives. Helmholtz is the parent organization of the Jülich Supercomputing Center, and these discussions with Helmholtz further influenced this deal.
Following a Data Science and Quantum Computing Workshop hosted in Vancouver from June 27-29, 2018, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed between Helmholtz Association centers DESY and Forschungszentrum Jülich, D-Wave, TRIUMF Innovations, and 1Qbit. The MOU will allow researchers from all parties to enhance their understanding of the potential of quantum computing to accelerate data science research into applications for discovery and innovation. The workshop was made possible in part by the government of B.C. and its European trade office.
D-Wave has been granted over 160 U.S. patents, published over 100 peer-reviewed papers in leading scientific journals, and provides quantum computing solutions to some of the world’s most advanced organizations. Today, there are more than 200 early applications developed on the D-Wave quantum system. The company has offices in Vancouver, British Columbia; Palo Alto, California; and Hanover, Maryland.
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