PRESS RELEASE — Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC), Europe’s leading Quantum Computing as-a-Service company, announced today that it debuted its latest system, Lucy, an 8-QPU quantum computer, on Amazon Braket.
With a new quantum processor from OQC, AWS is expanding Amazon Braket to support a new quantum hardware for the first time since Braket’s general availability in August 2020, expanding the service to the AWS Europe (London) Region, a significant milestone in providing customers access to a Europe-based quantum processor.
“Bringing OQC’s quantum computers to Amazon Braket is a natural step in bringing quantum to our customers’ fingertips and expanding our leadership in Europe. Our relationship with AWS is making it easier for businesses and researchers in Europe to access the power of quantum computing”, said Dr Ilana Wisby, Chief Executive Officer of OQC.
Following OQC’s convention to name its quantum computers after ground-breaking women in STEM, Lucy is named after Lucy Mensing, a German physicist and pioneer of quantum mechanics. Lucy joins Sophia, OQC’s system released in July to launch the company’s private Quantum Computing as-a-Service, another first in Europe.
Located in the UK, Lucy will provide Europe-friendly up-time and low-latency to customers in the region, offering higher serviceability with operations and support when they need it.
“Since launching Amazon Braket, our goal has been to offer customers access to different types of quantum hardware,” said Simone Severini, Director, Quantum Computing at AWS. “Starting today, customers can access OQC’s Lucy system on Amazon Braket, and, to support the launch, we are expanding the availability of Braket to the AWS London Region. This provides customers access to quantum hardware based in Europe for the first time, generating further momentum in the European landscape of organizations that are experimenting with quantum computing.”
The system’s location in Europe also provides advantages for data on- and near-shoring, a key concern for governmental agencies across Europe as well as large corporations with data residency and sovereignty requirements. These organisations now have access to a Europe-based quantum processor from OQC and through Amazon Braket.
Recently, OQC signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC) to boost quantum capability in the country.
Less queuing, more uptime
Thanks to its unique 3D architecture, the Coaxmon, OQC is able to scale its systems rapidly without any compromise on performance. Its systems’ parameters remain the same even when a step change occurs in the number of qubits, guaranteeing customers always get the same performance or better.
To constantly respond to customer needs OQC also integrates third party technology across its stack, offering world-class circuit optimisation. OQC’s compiler is designed to optimise the number of gates needed to execute a circuit, and initial tests have shown nearly 4X improvements for a ZX-calculus based circuit. These optimisations provide shallower circuits and more accurate results.
Finally, with the recent launch of Amazon Braket Hybrid Jobs, a feature that simplifies the use quantum processors in tandem with classical processors in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) service, OQC is ideally positioned to help customers study the potential of hybrid quantum- classical algorithms. Thanks to priority access to the quantum processors for the duration of each hybrid job, OQC’s systems are hybrid workload-ready. Now, with these innovative capabilities, customers have the tools they need to explore the power of quantum computing whilst mitigating NISQ-era shortcomings.
QEDMA, a quantum computing software company, based in Israel, developing algorithms and software for quantum hardware developers and end users; and Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI), based in the United States, offering ready-to-run quantum software and services to solve complex optimisation computations, were the first to access Lucy, in private preview.
“Access to OQC hardware via Amazon Braket means we’re able to make use of the full suite of AWS services as we apply our software which helps users learn and mitigate errors in their quantum computing applications,” said Dr. Asif Sinay, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of QEDMA Quantum Computing. “With AWS, we’re able to combine quantum computers via Braket with classical computing resources like GPUs to build high performance and fully integrated solutions. We’re thrilled to continue our partnership with OQC now with the additional capabilities that AWS can provide.”
QCI customers use the Qatalyst platform to make business decisions using quantum-ready classical and/or quantum computers. “By running Qatalyst on AWS, customers can easily explore their best path to quantum with no need for quantum expertise or complex programming,” said Robert Liscouski, CEO of QCI. “Being able to quickly assess the capabilities of the latest quantum hardware is critical in helping our customers in their quantum exploration. With the launch of the Lucy system from OQC on Amazon Braket, our engineers and customers have even more resources available to explore quantum innovation more easily.”
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