Quantum Computer Successfully Connected to Supercomputer; Combined System Still Waiting on a Jira Ticket
The hybrid platform can explore every possible solution at once, except for the one blocked by a "Needs Triage" label.
PARIS — French researchers announced Tuesday that they have successfully coupled a quantum processor to a classical supercomputer, creating a hybrid system capable of evaluating vast solution spaces in parallel, and that the system's first production job has been in a "Blocked" state since Thursday pending review by a colleague who is on holiday.
"The physics is solved," said a lead scientist at the CEA, France's atomic energy commission, which is partnering with the startup Alice & Bob on the project. "The qubits are coherent. The interconnect works. The scheduler works. The ticket to grant the scheduler access to the cluster has been assigned to Jean-Luc. Jean-Luc is in Brittany."
The system uses the Qaptiva software platform to hand off portions of a computation between quantum and classical hardware, allowing each to do what it does best. Researchers say a chemistry simulation that would take the supercomputer weeks could take the hybrid system hours, "once the ticket is moved to In Progress."
The ticket, QAPT-4471, was opened by a postdoctoral researcher and initially labeled "Needs Triage." It was subsequently relabeled "Waiting on Infra," then "Waiting on Security," then "Waiting on Jean-Luc," a label that a project manager said was "not official but accurate."
Quantum computing experts said the situation illustrates a truth of the field. "Superposition is easy," said one physicist. "The qubit is in every state at once. The change request is in exactly one state, and it is 'pending.'"
The researchers said they expect full quantum hardware to join the infrastructure in 2027, by which time Jean-Luc is expected to have returned, reviewed the ticket, and asked for "a bit more context."