The Quantum Spain initiative has officially completed its technological goal with the installation of a 35-qubit quantum processor at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS), which is a major milestone for European computing. With this accomplishment, MareNostrum-ONA officially moves from an experimental project to a fully functional quantum computing infrastructure. The technology, which was developed and implemented in partnership with GMV and Qilimanjaro, is currently part of MareNostrum 5, one of Europe’s most potent supercomputers, and is available to the scientific community through the Red Española de Supercomputación (RES).
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Operational Quantum Computing in a New phase
The infrastructure’s completion shows that Spain has the industrial potential to create, implement, scale, and sustain complex quantum systems in a production setting. A hybrid quantum-classical HPC environment particular to Southern Europe has been established by the program, which is spearheaded by the Ministry for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service through SEDIA.
“The infrastructure is running,” said Marta P. Estarellas, CEO of Qilimanjaro, highlighting the system’s immediate usefulness. It is being used by researchers. Over 45 projects have been granted access by the RES since the system went online, and together they have developed over 4,000 hours of computer time.
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Innovations in Efficiency and Hybrid Software
The 35-qubit processor has been quickly utilized by the scientific community. One of the most significant developments is Qdislib, a distributed quantum circuit cutting library developed by BSC researchers and the Workflows and Distributed Computing group. Large quantum circuits can be broken down into smaller subcircuits and executed in parallel over a mix of CPUs, GPUs, and QPUs with this software. This feature is crucial for hybrid ecosystems like MareNostrum-ONA to reach their full potential.
Researchers recently released findings about a Quantum Circuit Cache to increase this efficiency. In large-scale hybrid processes, this approach successfully eliminates duplicate calculations by detecting “semantic equivalency” among quantum activities. By avoiding up to 91.98% of duplicate subcircuit executions, the cache produced an astounding 11.2x speedup when tested on the 35-qubit hardware at BSC. As PhD candidate Mar Tejedor noted, the 35-qubit capacity has enabled the examination of far larger and more complex problems than was previously possible.
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Practical Uses: From Life Sciences to Finance
The infrastructure is being utilized to solve practical commercial problems in addition to theoretical computing. Drs. Massimiliano Ferrara, Santiago Forgas Coll, and Laura Sáez Ortuño led a research team that effectively used quantum kernel techniques to forecast venture quality in life-science equity crowdfunding.
This study is a historic first as it is the first published work based on quantum access enabled by the RES. According to Dr. Sáez, working with real hardware instead of just simulations has been “extremely meaningful” for confirming results and moving closer to practical applications.
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The Entire Quantum Spain Ecosystem
Both the corporate sector and academics use the Quantum Spain ecosystem as a vast hybrid testing field. Four main pillars of ongoing research effort are identified by the roadmap:
- Hybrid Artificial Intelligence: To develop Quantum Machine Learning (QML) algorithms that can analyze enormous datasets for pattern identification, researchers are connecting quantum processors with classical supercomputers.
- Industrial and Financial Optimization: Logistics, energy grid balancing, and financial risk management issues are being resolved by quantum annealing using the system’s analog and adiabatic capabilities.
- Quantum Chemistry & Materials Science: New medications and next-generation batteries may be discovered via the testing of algorithms to model molecules at the atomic level.
- Advanced Training and Simulations: Teams test “quantum-inspired” software designs and solutions using integrated quantum emulators prior to using the actual hardware.
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Future Outlook and Expansion
The roadmap does not conclude with the development of the 35-qubit digital processor. A new analog quantum processor, also built by Qilimanjaro, is presently being added to MareNostrum-ONA. This extension is a component of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking’s EuroQCS-Spain node.
Researchers studying optimization and simulation will have access to a single platform that combines digital quantum, analog quantum, and classical computing with this upcoming launch. Researchers and businesses can already submit applications to employ these resources through the RES, where initiatives are assessed according to their superiority in science and technology.
As the infrastructure advances, the ultimate goal of the Spanish scientific community remains to include quantum devices into standard HPC processes. MareNostrum-ONA is now the first 100% European-built quantum computer in Southern Europe, reaching the 35-qubit milestone and offering a decentralized, open-access resource for technology’s future.
