Oak Ridge National Laboratory (CSA CSM) has chosen D-Wave Systems Inc., a leader in computing systems, to provide cloud systems to help advance its hybid computing applications. Under the agreement, ORNL scientists will have cloud access to a D-Wave 2000Q™ system that allows for exploration of hybrid computing architectures as a way to achieve better solutions for scientific applications.

ORNL is a multi-program research laboratory dedicated to helping ensure America’s security and prosperity by addressing its energy, environmental and nuclear challenges through transformative science and technology solutions. ORNL employs almost 5000 people, including scientists and engineers in more than 100 disciplines, and houses Titan, the nation’s fastest supercomputer.

“ORNL researchers are investigating the use of quantum, neuromorphic and other new computing architectures with the potential to accelerate applications and programs important to the Department of Energy,” says Dr. Jeff Nichols, ORNL’s associate laboratory director of computing and computational sciences. “This agreement fits squarely within our objective of providing distinctive equipment and unique facilities to our researchers to solve some of the nation’s most compelling computing challenges. This program is also a natural extension of the lab’s leadership in high-performance computing, with the next step being to accelerate the nation’s exascale program.”

As part of the joint effort, D-Wave personnel will work with ORNL to map applications to the D-Wave architecture in order to solve new types of problems and to solve existing problems faster by combining computing architectures. “Advancing the problem-solving capabilities of quantum computing takes dedicated collaboration with leading scientists and industry experts,” says Robert Ewald, president of D-Wave International. “Our work with ORNL’s exceptional community of researchers and scientists will help us understand the potential of new hybrid computing architectures, and hopefully lead to faster and better solutions for critical and complex problems.”

In addition to advancing ORNL’s own applications and programs, ORNL and D-Wave aim to share these results with the scientific user community to enable improved hybrid computing applications.