In addition, a further CAD $500,000 has been awarded from the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP) as part of a growing relationship between the UK and Canada on quantum computing technology and expertise.
The project, called CATALYST, will deliver a hybrid quantum-classical framework combination, where computers of the type used now are programmed to instruct quantum computers. This will give Rolls-Royce the means to evaluate and implement new quantum algorithms, accelerating the time to do this from several hours to just a few minutes. This will bring huge efficiencies to future product design processes and also contributes to the first of the UK Government’s recently announced National Quantum Strategy Missions.
UK-based quantum error correction company, Riverlane, and quantum computing company, Xanadu based in Ontario, Canada, are already existing partners with Rolls-Royce on other projects.
Commenting Leigh Lapworth, Rolls-Royce Fellow in Computational Science, said, "This is the first quantum computing research and development collaboration to be led by a large industry partner, instead of smaller start-ups. Developing industrially robust software is a multi-year activity, even without the new thinking needed by quantum computers."
"Our shared vision and approach will make us one of the first companies to benefit from fault tolerant computers. The techniques we develop in this project will be those that enable us to benefit from the UK’s quantum pathway of a million error-corrected quantum operations in 2028; a billion in 2032; and a trillion in 2035."
CATALYST draws on the expertise of each partner: industrial applications (Rolls-Royce); quantum algorithms (Riverlane); and hybrid quantum-classical compilation (Xanadu).
Steve Brierley, Riverlane’s CEO, said, "The CATALYST project brings together leading quantum computing companies and industry experts from the UK and Canada to help improve the quality of the quantum algorithms. By developing better quantum algorithms, we can reduce the number of quantum operations required to unlock world-changing applications, sooner. Such work across the quantum computing stack is vital to help us unlock millions and then trillions of reliable quantum operations, aligning with the UK Government’s targets to reach the so-called MegaQuOp threshold by 2028 and TeraQuOp threshold by 2035."
Rolls-Royce’s largest research models solve equations with several billion variables and its ambition is to reach a trillion and beyond, but it will be a decade or more before quantum computers achieve these scales.
Many of the processing steps are going to be conducted on classical computers. These can dominate the end-to-end run time to such an extent that, if unaddressed, they will prevent even an infinitely fast quantum computer from delivering a meaningful advantage. Accelerating the time taken to do this will enable users to investigate more demanding test cases and develop the tools and software needed to demonstrate industrial advantage.
