Quantum H2
Quantinuum Breaks the Record for Quantum Volume, Reveals the 56-Qubit Quantum H2 Upgrade, Improves Chemistry Simulations, and Grows Worldwide
Quantinuum, a leading quantum computing startup, developed a new Quantum Volume standard, modernised its flagship quantum computer, and demonstrated advances in natural language processing and quantum chemistry simulations. The company also established a major strategic agreement to accelerate Gulf quantum technology adoption.
With its H2 quantum computer, Quantinuum has recorded the greatest Quantum Volume (QV) to date, 2²³ = 8,388,608. IBM was the first to introduce the QV metric, which integrates qubit count, gate fidelity, connectivity, and error rates to quantify the total processing performance of a quantum system. This accomplishment brings Quantinuum’s five-year pledge to tenfold its QV per year to a close. According to Quantinuum, the QV metric is still a valid and ungameable standard for the NISQ (Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum) period, allowing systems to be directly compared as they develop towards fault-tolerant quantum computing.
With the release of the H2-1, Quantinuum expanded its hardware capabilities by upgrading its flagship System Model quantum H2 from 32 to 56 trapped-ion qubits. This is not a brand-new system; it is an improvement. The business said that because a mathematically accurate simulation of the H2-1 quantum processor would now demand the full memory of the top supercomputers in the world, commercial, “fully encompassing” emulators will no longer be available due to the higher qubit count.
Rajeeb Hazra, CEO of Quantinuum, emphasised that the emphasis on qubit quality rather than number is essential for facilitating advancements in fault tolerance and commercialisation. Building on successful virtualisation efforts on the 32-qubit system, Microsoft Azure Quantum officials expressed excitement about developing additional logical qubits with even lower error rates utilising the new 56-qubit computer. Microsoft and Quantinuum have been partners since 2019.
The first scalable, error-corrected, end-to-end computational chemistry process in the world was revealed by Quantinuum, a company that specialises in quantum software applications. This milestone demonstrates the feasibility, scalability, and implementability of quantum error-corrected chemistry simulations within Quantinuum’s quantum computing stack on the H2 quantum computer using the InQuanto chemistry platform. In order to achieve quantum advantage in chemistry and fault-tolerant quantum simulations, the work combines logical qubits and quantum phase estimation (QPE) for molecular energy calculations.
This process makes use of the scalable QCCD architecture of the H2, which is renowned for its real-time QEC decoding, conditional logic, mid-circuit measurements, high-fidelity operations, and all-to-all connection. Customers will be able to access the workflow through InQuanto. According to Quantinuum, a synergistic strategy integrating quantum computing workflows with traditional supercomputing and artificial intelligence will be necessary to achieve quantum advantage in chemistry.
Additionally, the next iteration of Quantinuum’s quantum natural language processing (QNLP) package, λambeq Gen II, has been made available. With λambeq Gen II, users may directly translate linguistic structures and meaning into quantum circuits for actual quantum hardware, building on the team’s groundbreaking work in QNLP since 2016. Compared to DisCoCat, the new version includes a significantly greater amount of compositional structure in language and is based on a mathematical foundation known as DisCoCirc. Among the main advantages of DisCoCirc in λambeq Gen II are:
- Allowing for the building of sentence structures into text structures in order to handle lengthy texts.
- Providing a condensed, language-neutral representation of compositional structure.
- Presenting convincing theoretical justification for actual improved performance on quantum devices.
- Using compositional generalisation to address trainability concerns in quantum machine learning models.
- In order to support explainable AI (XAI), compositional interpretability must be achieved. With more than 50,000 downloads, the λambeq program has a vibrant user base.
In an effort to speed up the commercial adoption of quantum technology in Qatar and the Gulf, Quantinuum established a joint venture with Al Rabban Capital. This collaboration sets the stage for Qatar to spend up to USD $1 billion in Quantinuum’s quantum technologies over the course of the following ten years, as well as to co-create applications that are suited to local requirements and to expand its workforce.
This partnership is a calculated move to increase Quantinuum’s commercial reach by forming enduring partnerships that promote economic expansion. US and Qatari policymakers and business leaders discussed the partnership at a Doha business roundtable. Discussions focused on U.S.-Qatari relations and similar corporate interests such AI innovation and quantum computing’s potential to power AI data centres.
Helios, Quantinuum’s next-generation system, is anticipated to outperform H2 in terms of both scale and fidelity, supporting the business’s aim of expanding its system and improving performance at the same time. The business highlights its leadership role and dedication to providing clients with better performance.
