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In Jülich, North Rhine-Westphalia, researchers have put a new quantum computer system into operation.
The so-called quantum annealer is part of an infrastructure for quantum computing that gives researchers in Germany and Europe access to various quantum systems in the cloud, as physicist Astrid Lambrecht said in Jülich on Monday.
It is the first model of its kind outside of North America.
The system, which is cooled to almost minus 273 degrees Celsius inside the machine, was developed by the Canadian company D-Wave.
The quantum annealer has a computing power of more than 5000 superconducting quantum bits, qubits for short.
According to the research center Jülich, 44 experts were involved in building the model.
It is the first quantum computer system designed for industrial applications.
"For many, quantum physics is difficult to grasp, beyond intuition and yet central to our lives," said Federal Research Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP), who was connected to the commissioning via video. "Quantum technologies can provide a major leap forward." As areas of application, she named model calculations for climate research, tap-proof communication, planning traffic flows in real time, the development of new medical agents or the analysis of complex processes on financial markets. The minister also said that Germany and Europe have to catch up on quantum computing.
"With this concentrated computing power, we can answer questions from the areas of climate change, artificial intelligence, drug and vaccine research," said North Rhine-Westphalia's Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU).
The technology "opens the door to a whole world of new applications."
Vibration-free building
Since these computers need a vibration-free location, a new building with two machine halls was built in Jülich.
The halls have special foundations that absorb vibrations.
The processors also have to be extremely cooled.
»JUNIQ« stands for Jülich user infrastructure for quantum computing.
The research center is located to the west of Cologne near the Hambach lignite opencast mine.
Quantum computers work differently and are considered to be much more powerful than conventional mainframe computers.
Traditional computers work with bits.
A bit can only have two states: »One« and »Zero« or »On« and »Off«.
Quantum computers, on the other hand, work with qubits (»quantum bits«).
A qubit can not only represent "one" and "zero", but theoretically an infinite number of states in between and all at the same time.
ak/AFP/dpa
