Australia’s Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre in Perth will deploy Nvidia’s CUDA Quantum computing platform at its National Supercomputing and Quantum Computing Innovation Hub.
The CUDA Quantum platform is Nvidia's open-source hybrid quantum computing platform that uses quantum simulation tools and capabilities to program hybrid CPU, GPU, and QPU systems. Such simulation platforms are useful for developers to learn about and develop quantum algorithms ahead of using actual quantum hardware.
The Pawsey system will be powered by eight Grace Hopper Superchip nodes based on Nvidia MGX modular architecture. By combining an Arm-based Nvidia Grace CPU with an Nvidia H100 Tensor Core GPU in the same package, GH200 Superchips eliminate the need for a traditional CPU-to-GPU PCIe connection.
Additionally, through the use of Nvidia NVLink-C2C chip interconnects the bandwidth between the GPU and CPU is seven times greater than the latest PCIe technology, with the GH200 Superchips delivering a ten-fold increase in application performance when processing data sets measured in terabytes.
Researchers at Pawsey will use the platform to study quantum machine learning, chemistry simulations, image processing for radio astronomy, financial analysis, bioinformatics, and specialized quantum simulators.
“High-performance simulation is essential for researchers to address the biggest challenges in quantum computing — from algorithm discovery and device design to the invention of powerful methods for error correction, calibration and control,” said Tim Costa, director of HPC and quantum computing at Nvidia. “CUDA Quantum, together with the Nvidia Grace Hopper Superchip, allows innovators such as Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre to achieve these essential breakthroughs and accelerate the timeline to useful quantum-integrated supercomputing.”
Mark Stickells, executive director at the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre, added: “Pawsey Supercomputing Centre’s research and test-bed facility is helping to advance scientific exploration for all of Australia as well as the world. Nvidia’s CUDA Quantum platform will allow our scientists to push the boundaries of what’s possible in quantum computing research.”
According to Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation), the domestic quantum computing market has an estimated annual revenue of AU$2.5 billion ($1.6bn), with the potential to create 10,000 new jobs in Australia by 2040.
Located in Perth, Western Australia, Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre is home to the 50 petaflops Setonix supercomputer which includes an eight-cabinet HPE Cray EX system that contains more than 200,000 AMD compute cores across 1600 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, and in early 2022 installed a room-temperature diamond-based quantum computer developed by Quantum Brilliance.
In a statement, Pawsey said it is committed to making the Nvidia CUDA Quantum platform available to the Australian quantum community and international partners.
