
Japanese IT company NEC has built the first quantum processor based on the ParityQC architecture. The Parity technology was invented at the University of Innsbruck and is being further developed and marketed by the spin-off ParityQC. NEC is now making the quantum computer, which specializes in optimization problems, available to the scientific community via the cloud.
Around the world, scientists and companies are working feverishly to build quantum computers. These new computing machines will solve many problems more quickly and efficiently than previous technologies. Particularly in the search for optimal solutions to complex problems, quantum technology promises to have practical applications very soon. The basis for this are quantum annealing systems or adiabatic quantum computers, which do not work with gate operations like classical computers. Instead, they use the quantum property to search for an optimal state in a physical system. Packaged in appropriate algorithms, these systems can be used to find optimal solutions to many problems.
Japanese quantum chip with Austrian know-how
Now, the IT corporation NEC has built an 8-bit quantum annealer based on the architecture of the Innsbruck spin-off ParityQC. The first Parity quantum chip consists of superconducting parametron qubits and is now being made available to the scientific community by NEC via the cloud. "This is an impressive validation of the intrinsic advantages offered by the ParityQC approach: Insensitivity to noise and scalability to a fully interconnected quantum computer while maintaining long coherence times," enthuses Hermann Hauser, co-founder of Amadeus Capital and Acorn Computers. "The acquisition of the ParityQC architecture by NEC, one of the world’s leading supercomputer companies, is an extraordinary success for the four-year-old spin-off from the University of Innsbruck. It makes ParityQC the world’s first QC architecture company with a proven, working application. The benefits of this approach will lead to the adoption of ParityQC designs by many other hardware manufacturers. A number of recent QC consortium announcements in Europe already demonstrate this," Hauser continued. "NEC was the first company to introduce a superconducting qubit in the 1990s. We are very proud that their quantum processor, which will now be available for external use for the first time, is based on our architecture," said Wolfgang Lechner and Magdalena Hauser, co-managing directors of ParityQC.
Austrian success story
ParityQC was founded in Innsbruck in2020 and markets a technology based on a now patented idea that quantum physicist Wolfgang Lechner developed in the 2010s together with Peter Zoller and Philipp Hauke at the University of Innsbruck and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The spin-off was carried out via the University of Innsbruck’s Transfer Office Science - Economy - Society. "It is now becoming increasingly apparent that our initial assessment of this technology in the course of the 2015 invention disclosure was correct and that the basic invention has the potential to become the standard in quantum computing technology. The exploitation of these research results via the establishment of a spin-off makes it possible to further develop the technology in Europe and thus to have maximum influence on the development of this industry while keeping the value creation in Europe. A big compliment to the two managing directors for the foresight and prudence with which they select their development partners," says transfer office manager Sara Matt.
