Oak Ridge National Laboratory chose IQM...
...and I know why....
Oak Ridge National Laboratory just bought an IQM Radiance 20-qubit superconducting quantum computer. This is ORNL’s first purchased on-premises system, due to be delivered in Q3 2025, after which it will be integrated into ORNL’s HPC systems and made available through ORNL’s Quantum Computing User Program (QCUP).
I had the opportunity to interview folks from ORNL and IQM for this article, but I actually know something they don’t….
IQT Research is finalizing a report that, among other information, analyses, and forecasts, lists which major quantum computer vendors have sold which quantum computers to whom, and for how much (when known or otherwise inferable). So, when word spread that ORNL is going to integrate an IQM system into its HPC environment, my response wasn’t to ask why. My response was to say, “of course.”
The limitation of the press release is that it focuses on one organization and one system. But when you take a step back and look at the bigger picture, you see a pattern emerge. I’m not at liberty to describe the entire canvas here, but if you were to ask me, “guess who just sold a quantum computer to an HPC center,” my first guess would be IQM.
That said, ORNL provided some insight into IQM’s success in this space. The IQM Resonance cloud platform provides a testbed configuration that allows the exploration of quantum-HPC integration concepts. I haven’t had the opportunity to see or use this testbed, but I have been able to see that it’s clearly working out for them.
Image generated by OpenAI's DALL·E.