Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre in Perth, Western Australia, has deployed a quantum computing platform that integrates with the center’s 50 petaflops Setonix supercomputer.

The project, dubbed the Setonix‑Q pilot, has been delivered through Pawsey’s Quantum Hub Portal and offers free, dual‑allocation access to quantum simulators powered by Nvidia GH200 Superchips and CUDA‑Q architecture, as well as quantum hardware available via Amazon Braket.

Setonix, a HPE Cray EX supercomputer named after the scientific name for the Australian marsupial, the quokka, was delivered to the facility in September 2021.

The quantum platform, first announced in February 2024, will provide researchers with access to ion‑trap, superconducting, and neutral‑atom QPUs, including IonQ Aria and Forte, IQM Garnet and Emerald, QuEra Aquila, and Rigetti Ankaa‑3. The project has been funded through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) and the National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme (NCMAS).

Researchers across Australia are invited to apply for Setonix-Q Pilot access through an upcoming NCMAS call in October.

“This new portal gives Australian researchers a chance to combine the advanced silicon-based computing of our CPU- and GPU-based Setonix supercomputer with an array of emerging quantum computing platforms,” Mark Stickells, CEO at Pawsey, said. “This is a world-first platform, supporting Australian researchers at the leading edge of advanced computing.”

He added: “It is an important milestone in Pawsey’s ongoing efforts as an advanced national computing facility, providing Australian researchers with tools to accelerate their scientific discoveries, and address some of the important challenges of our time.”

In addition to the Setonix supercomputer, which includes an eight-cabinet HPE Cray EX system containing more than 200,000 AMD compute cores across 1,600 nodes, and more than 750 AMD GPUs, the Pawsey Centre also operates the Cray XC30 200 teraflops Galaxy system and the 756 teraflops HPE GPU cluster known as Garrawarla.

In early 2022, the center installed a room-temperature diamond-based quantum computer developed by Quantum Brilliance.