The path to Pasqal's first 200 qubits processors

Pasqal is moving! With progress on hardware and software, funding by Quantonation, TPY and BPI France, along with the support of Région Île-de-France in the beginning of the year, Pasqal has reached the size of 15 team members, with more coming, and is expanding with the opening of a new facility, in the South of Paris, very close to its “historic” birthplace of Palaiseau at Institut d’Optique. There were so many announcements over the last weeks by IBM, IonQ, D-Wave and others that it was hard to keep track, but one thing is certain: Pasqal is on track to achieve a multi-100 qubits Quantum Simulator by the end of this year with remote access in 2021. This will make Pasqal the most powerful commercial quantum simulation platform in the world by far, at a time when the best alternatives (ion- and superconductor-based platforms) are publishing their roadmaps with 1000 qubits to be reached, at best, not earlier than 2023.

• Our technical Whitepaper has been published in the reference journal “Quantum” back in June. It describes our technology, in particular the two modes of control – Analog or Digital – that are used in order to perform computations with the arrays of neutral atoms at the core of our processors.

• We have achieved a 10×10 qubits register at Pasqal already, and our academic partners at IOGS (Institut d’Optique Graduate School) are slightly ahead of us around (and beyond) 200 qubits with the same technology. Building the register is the first step in the quantum computation process, analog or digital.

• We’re proceeding with the study of use cases on our platform in analog mode (“quantum simulator”) beyond physics. A report is currently being written on the collaboration with utility EDF in the field of smart mobility and will be submitted for publication. A collaboration is starting with Qubit Pharmaceuticals on computational drug design. More information here on the classes of applications.

• Our partner, leading HPC industrial actor Atos, has published a very important report titled “Solving optimization problems with Rydberg analog quantum computers: Realistic requirements for quantum advantage using noisy simulation and classical benchmarks“ which shows very well how Pasqal’s technology can reach quantum advantage for optimization problems in the ∼1,000−1,200 qubits range and even below with our current processor, with proper optimization in our view.
• While we’re proceeding with the assembly of our first 200 qubits computer, a second quantum computer is already in construction and will be dedicated to our cloud-computing service that will start end of 2021. In the meantime, Pasqal’s partners will have access to the first processor through collaborative projects.

• Pasqal settled in new premises in Massy, 30 minutes South of Paris, with space available for the production of industrial appliances for customers. The team is strong of 15 members now, meet them through this virtual tour: