Computers with components made of diamond are being installed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee in a bid to marry quantum information technologies with classical computers, the lab announced on Tuesday. 

Quantum science promises advances in fields from cryptography to chemistry, but realizing that promise depends on finding a way to connect quantum and classical systems. 

“By hosting a Quantum Brilliance system on site, we’ll be maturing the real mechanics of hybrid computing — co‑scheduling, end‑to‑end performance tuning, data and workflow orchestration, workforce development and more — so we can eventually move HPC-quantum integration from a conceptual pilot to a fully embedded capability within leadership computing,” said Ashley Barker, who directs Oak Ridge’s Leadership Computing Facility Program. 

Quantum Brilliance’s products use synthetic diamonds to ease the challenges of today’s quantum systems, such as external noise that introduces errors into quantum calculations.

“Diamond is extremely hard, so even at room temperature and atmospheric pressure, there isn’t sufficient thermal energy to generate the vibrations that would typically disrupt qubit coherence,” said CEO Mark Luo. “This intrinsic stability allows our QPUs to function without the complexity and cost of cryogenics, laser and vacuum systems. This allowed us to engineer a revolutionary QPU solution that operates efficiently at room temperature while dramatically reducing size, weight and power consumption.”

Oak Ridge is among the national labs working on quantum systems with companies and other federal entities.