At the Quantum Village organised for the first time at Vivatech (stand E59), the France Hybrid HPC Quantum Initiative (HQI) – led by the CEA, GENCI and Inria, supported by teams from the CNRS and France Universités – is bringing together major players in the quantum ecosystem and showcasing start-ups in several areas of the National Quantum Strategy: computing, communications and cryptography. For the 2023 edition of Vivatech, Europe’s leading event dedicated to innovation, 12 start-ups will be hosted, among the thirty or so players present in this village dedicated to quantum: Alice & Bob, C12, ColibrITD, Cryptonext Security, IQM, Multiverse Computing, Pasqal, Quandela, Qubit Pharmaceuticals, QbitSoft, QuantFi and Welinq. The Quantum Village will also welcome Crystal Quantum Computing, EDF, Le Lab Quantique, Matmut, QCWare, Quantinuum, Siquance, Teratec, as well as the Quantum Computing Application Benchmarks (BACQ) initiative. The Quantum Village by HQI was made possible by the support of sponsors Eviden, OVHcloud and Quantonation, the leading investment fund in quantum technologies.

With the aim of contributing to sustainable science and innovation, the Quantum Village will focus on societal issues:

  • the energy implications of quantum technologies and the QEI (Quantum Energy Initiative) will be presented by Olivier Ezratty on Friday 16 June ;
  • the issue of gender equality, at the heart of Vivatech 2023, will be addressed at the Women in Quantum round table on 15 June;
  • with the aim of sharing the challenges and applications of quantum computing with as many people as possible, Charles Antoine, senior lecturer at Sorbonne University, author and populariser, will be shedding light on the subject at the general public day on the morning of Saturday 17 June. He will be talking about the fundamental sciences and quantum computing, the myths and realities of applications, the ecosystem, training and careers.

Launched in January 2022, a year after the French government announced its National Quantum Plan, the HQI initiative aims to use its presence at Vivatech to offer innovation players a showcase for the French quantum ecosystem and beyond, from the angle of computing on the one hand and cybersecurity on the other. This is why the following programme of pitches and speeches has been organised:

HQI: hybrid quantum computing for innovation

Initiated as part of France 2030, in the service of open, academic and industrial science, HQI aims to seamlessly integrate a variety of quantum computing devices with conventional computing resources, creating a hybrid system. This is an essential step towards unleashing the power of quantum computers to handle the first practical applications.

Through the HQI research programme, a large number of use cases will be explored, such as the simulation of physical systems, quantum chemistry, optimisation and quantum machine learning. This could lead, for example, to advances in research into new drugs and materials, the development of smart cities, the deployment of autonomous vehicle fleets, air and sea traffic management, or machine learning (quantum NLP).

In line with recent announcements by standards bodies and security agencies, the impact on cybersecurity and post-quantum cryptography will also be presented.

HQI recently announced that GENCI and CEA, as part of the European project HPCQS (HPC Quantum Simulation hybrid), are already providing access to hardware-agnostic (Eviden QaptivaTM) and hardware-specific (Pasqal Pulser or Quandela’s Perceval) programming and emulation environments ahead of the installation at the end of the year of a first 100-qubit quantum system from the Pasqal company, which will be acquired by GENCI in 2023 and co-financed by HQI and the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking.

These emulation environments enable users to design applications for quantum computers and simulate their execution on a virtual model of a quantum computer running on a conventional supercomputer. In this way, HQI is encouraging future end-users to explore the potential of hybrid HPC/quantum simulations to take advantage of these new accelerators.

The first quantum emulation services offered by HQI are Eviden QaptivaTM, Pulser (Pasqal) and Perceval (Quandela). Eviden, Pasqal and Quandela are organising regular training sessions to help users get to grips with these services.

Finally, the HQI platform will also be made available to the various projects initiated as part of the Ile-de-France Region’s Quantum Pack.

About HQI

HQI (France Hybrid Quantum Initiative) is a national initiative. It aims to combine a hybrid computing platform, an academic and industrial research programme and the dissemination of applications.

Initiated by the Secrétariat Général pour l’Investissement (SGPI), as part of France 2030, HQI is supported by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), on behalf of the French government, as part of France 2030, with an overall budget of €72.3m from France 2030.

Press Contact

HQI
Nicolas Belot
contact@genci.fr – +33 (7) 60 99 95 10