Oak Ridge National Laboratory Acquires D-Wave 2000Q Cloud Services to Accelerate Hybrid Computing Applications

Program designed to investigate new architectures that may accelerate ORNL and U.S. Department of Energy programs


HANOVER, MD--(Marketwired - Jul 25, 2017) - D-Wave Systems Inc., the leader in quantum computing systems and software, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the largest U.S. Department of Energy science and energy laboratory, today announced an agreement aimed at advancing hybrid computing applications, particularly targeted at helping accelerate future exascale applications. Under the agreement, ORNL scientists will have cloud access to a D-Wave 2000Q™ system to allow for exploration of hybrid computing architectures as a way to achieve better solutions for scientific applications.

ORNL is a multi-program research laboratory dedicated to helping ensure America's security and prosperity by addressing its energy, environmental, and nuclear challenges through transformative science and technology solutions. ORNL employs almost 5000 people, including scientists and engineers in more than 100 disciplines, and houses Titan, the nation's fastest supercomputer.

"ORNL researchers are investigating the use of quantum, neuromorphic, and other new computing architectures with the potential to accelerate applications and programs important to the Department of Energy," said Dr. Jeff Nichols, Associate Laboratory Director of Computing and Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. "This agreement fits squarely within our objective of providing distinctive equipment and unique facilities to our researchers to solve some of the nation's most compelling computing challenges. This program is also a natural extension of the lab's leadership in high-performance computing, with the next step being to accelerate the nation's exascale program."

As part of the joint effort, D-Wave personnel will work with ORNL to map applications to the D-Wave architecture in order to solve new types of problems, and to solve existing problems faster by combining computing architectures.

"Advancing the problem-solving capabilities of quantum computing takes dedicated collaboration with leading scientists and industry experts," said Robert "Bo" Ewald, president of D-Wave International. "Our work with ORNL's exceptional community of researchers and scientists will help us understand the potential of new hybrid computing architectures, and hopefully lead to faster and better solutions for critical and complex problems."

In addition to advancing ORNL's own applications and programs, ORNL and D-Wave aim to share these results with the scientific user community to enable improved hybrid computing applications.

About D-Wave Systems Inc.
D-Wave is the leader in the development and delivery of quantum computing systems and software, and the world's only commercial supplier of quantum computers. Our mission is to unlock the power of quantum computing for the world. We believe that quantum computing will enable solutions to the most challenging national defense, scientific, technical, and commercial problems. D-Wave's systems are being used by some of the world's most advanced organizations, including Lockheed Martin, Google, NASA Ames, USRA, USC, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. With headquarters near Vancouver, Canada, D-Wave's U.S. operations are based in Palo Alto, CA and Hanover, MD. D-Wave has a blue-chip investor base including Goldman Sachs, Bezos Expeditions, DFJ, In-Q-Tel, BDC Capital, Growthworks, 180 Degree Capital Corp., International Investment and Underwriting, and Kensington Partners Limited. For more information, visit: www.dwavesys.com.

About the Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the largest US Department of Energy science and energy laboratory, conducting basic and applied research to deliver transformative solutions to compelling problems in energy and security. ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle for the Department of Energy's Office of Science.

Contact Information:

D-Wave