The Quantum village by HQI at Vivatech: the quantum computing ecosystem mobilized for Europe’s biggest tech event

For the 2nd year running, France Hybrid HPC Quantum Initiative (HQI) – led by CEA, GENCI and Inria, supported by teams from CNRS and France Universités – is organizing the Quantum village by HQI @Vivatech (stand L12). The Quantum Village by HQI is the main space dedicated entirely to quantum computing and technologies at Europe’s leading innovation event, and is supported by Eviden, OVHcloud and Quantonation, the leading investment fund in quantum technologies. HQI federates major players in the quantum ecosystem and highlights startups in several facets of the National Quantum Strategy: computing, communications and cryptography.

For this 2024 edition, the theme of the Quantum Village by HQI will be “Quantum computing: towards a realistic path”. This “realistic path” will lead all players in the industry to share the concrete advances they have made with stakeholders in innovation, private and public, experts and generalists alike.

Among these players, 15 startups will be present. 12 of them will be hosted and have a counter in the Quantum village on stand L12.

For 4 days, from May 22 to 25, the following companies will be present: Alice & Bob, Aqora Quantum, C12, ColibrITD, Cryptonext Security, IQM, Multiverse Computing, Pasqal, Quandela, Qubit Pharmaceuticals, Quobly, QbitSoft, Viqthor and Welinq. The Quantum Village will also welcome Teratec, Le Lab Quantique, the Pôle Systematic, EDF, the BACQ/MetriQS program, and many others. The Direction Générale de l’Armement will also be exhibiting its PROQCIMA program.

While France is the cradle of several quantum computing technologies, it is also home to one of the most dynamic ecosystems in Europe, if not the world. So, beyond the quantum hype, the Quantum Village aims to give a voice to those involved in these emerging technologies, as well as to those who use them or could be led to use them.

The program for this 2024 edition aims to reflect the strengths of the French, and more broadly, European quantum ecosystem. It will feature some 30 pitches and 4 roundtables organized around the following themes:

• The emergence of the quantum computing sector and the challenge of financing it;
• Artificial intelligence and quantum computing: convergence and limits ;
• Public authorities, major players in quantum computing ;
• Women in Quantum.

This year, the focus on gender equality will once again be reflected in the Women in Quantum round table, which will take place during the public day on Saturday May 25.

Finally, to share the challenges and applications of quantum computing with as many people as possible, Charles Antoine, lecturer at Sorbonne University, author and popularizer, and Jean-Baptiste Latre, CEO and founder of Qualitative Computing, will shed light on the morning of Saturday May 25. They will discuss fundamental science and quantum computing, myths and realities about 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 program of pitches and speeches has been proposed:

HQI: hybrid quantum computing for innovation

Initiated as part of France 2030, HQI aims to seamlessly integrate various quantum computing devices with conventional computing resources (supercomputers), creating a hybrid system. This is an essential step towards unleashing the power of quantum computers to handle the first practical applications.

The HQI research program explores a number of use cases, including physical system simulation, quantum chemistry, optimization and quantum machine learning. This could translate, for example, into advances in research into new drugs and materials, the development of smart cities, the deployment of autonomous vehicle fleets, air and sea traffic management, and 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 announced in 2023 that GENCI and CEA, as part of the European project HPCQS (HPC Quantum Simulation hybrid), already provide access to hardware-agnostic (Eviden Qaptiva™) and hardware-specific (Pasqal Pulser or Quandela’s Perceval) programming and emulation environments ahead of the installation at the end of the year at the TGCC (CEA’s Très Grand Centre de Calcul) of a first 100-qubit quantum system from the Pasqal company, acquired by GENCI, co-financed by HQI and the EuroHPC joint venture.

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 organize regular training sessions to ensure that users are fully up to speed. These services will soon be complemented by other environments such as Callisto, the noisy C12 emulator, and Felis from Alice & Bob, both of which are already available from OVHcloud, the quantum circuit simulator from QPerfect MIMIQ, and the high-level programming environment Qrisp, developed by Fraunhofer FOKUS.

Last but not least, the HQI platform is also made available to the various projects initiated as part of the Ile-de-France Region’s Quantum Pack. To date, 13 use cases in fields as varied as aeronautics, insurance, banking and healthcare have benefited from this system.

About HQI

HQI (France Hybrid HPC 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.