Oak Ridge Quantum Forum Highlights Hybrid Computing Work
In July, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) hosted its seventh Quantum Computing User Forum, which attracted 184 researchers, developers, and vendor staff. The forum highlighted ongoing work from ORNL’s user program and included workshops led by sponsoring companies. This recap focuses on the event itself.
Forum highlights
According to the August 19 press release, the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility organized the forum, which centers on the Quantum Computing User Program (QCUP). QCUP provides researchers with cloud access to commercial quantum machines and is part of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) QUEST initiative. Attendees represented universities, national laboratories, and industry.
Sessions covered a range of topics, including quantum applications, software development, simulations, and hybrid quantum-HPC workflows. A poster session ran concurrently with the talks, and three posters received recognition based on attendee votes. These included a Kokkos-accelerated circuit simulator by ORNL researchers and a quantum singular value decomposition method for partial differential equations from the University of Kansas. Do note that these are all works in progress.
Claire Marvinney, an ORNL research scientist and co-organizer of the event, explained that the lab’s presentations addressed error correction, hybrid computing, astrophysics, finance, and quantum chemistry. She added that some work utilized cloud resources, whereas other projects ran on the lab’s on-site machines: a six-qubit Quantum Brilliance Quoll and a 20-qubit IQM Pathfinder. Both are small research systems.
Sponsoring vendors
The companies conducting the workshops were Quantinuum, IonQ, IBM, and IQM. These four companies sponsor QCUP, which makes their presence a commercial arrangement. Each company led hands-on sessions and delivered a keynote to showcase their hardware and software to potential users.
The forum concluded with a session on openQSE, the Open Quantum-HPC Software Ecosystem. This initiative is described as a community-driven effort to establish vendor-neutral interfaces between quantum machines and high-performance computers. At this stage, it’s a discussion about standards.
Organizers emphasized community building and new collaborations, a common focus for user forums. No funding, new hardware, or experimental results were announced. The event indicates the direction of the DOE’s quantum program, with current capabilities relying on small on-site machines and cloud access to commercial systems.