D-Wave and Forschungszentrum Jülich launch first in-region commercial quantum computer for European access

(YahooFinance) D-Wave Systems Inc., the leader in quantum computing systems, software and services, and the only company building both quantum annealing and gate-based quantum computers, announced the launch of the first Leap™ quantum cloud-based system outside North America at Forschungszentrum Jülich Supercomputing Centre on January 17. The offering provides access to the Advantage™ quantum system, which contains more than 5000 qubits and will be available to European users at Forschungszentrum Jülich immediately in the cloud via Leap. This marks the first-ever annealing quantum computer physically located in Europe.
The expansion is part of the Jülich User Infrastructure for Quantum Computing (JUNIQ), which has provided researchers across Europe with access to various quantum systems since 2019. Newly appointed German Federal Minister of Education and Research Bettina Stark-Watzinger; North Rhine-Westphalia’s Minister President Hendrik Wüst; Mariya Gabriel, EU Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth; and Canadian Ambassador Stéphane Dion launched the system in an event today, along with D-Wave’s CEO Alan Baratz and CaixaBank’s CEO Gonzalo Gortazar, showcasing the importance of collaboration on practical quantum application development across industries and research fields.
“As businesses and research organizations identify mission-critical problems in need of quantum investment, the market opportunity for quantum computing grows faster than ever,” said Alan Baratz, CEO, D-Wave. “This is particularly true in Europe, where we’re seeing an increasing number of enterprises, universities, and even government entities across the continent already begin to benefit from access to quantum technologies. We are excited to bring Forschungszentrum Jülich’s deep computing expertise and D-Wave’s transformational quantum computing technology together. I’m proud that this is the first commercial quantum computing system in-region in Europe and am excited to see the innovations and applications which come with the installation of this system.”
Forschungszentrum Jülich has announced their goal of establishing a leading development and user community from industry and business for quantum computing applications in Germany and Europe. “To this end, we have created JUNIQ at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre, a user facility for open innovation that provides users with a unified quantum computing platform as a service and the associated competencies for user support and joint software development,” explains Prof. Wolfgang Marquardt, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Research Center. “With JUNIQ, we provide users and developers with service-oriented access to our unique Jülich quantum computing ecosystem, which, due to its excellent technical equipment, but especially due to the bundling of our strong expertise in supercomputing and quantum technologies, offers the best conditions to rapidly advance the value-added use of quantum computers.”
The new quantum system is the second D-Wave quantum computer within the JUNIQ user infrastructure and the world’s first Advantage™ system located outside the company’s headquarters in Canada. “We operate the system right here at Jülich – this gives us the opportunity to integrate it closely into our supercomputing infrastructure,” explains Prof. Kristel Michielsen, a pioneer in quantum computing and head of the Quantum Information Processing group at JSC.