Japan's Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology is set to work on a pair of quantum computers, and inject Nvidia's latest accelerators into one of its existing supercomputers.

The Institute (AIST) on Tuesday announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding with IBM that will see the two entities "strengthen collaboration for the industrialization of quantum technology" and "promote the development of next-generation quantum computers and their supply chain."

Japanese media report that the collaboration aims to produce a machine packing 10,000 qubits - a number that vastly exceeds today's most capable quantum computers.

AIST hopes its collab with Big Blue advances Japan's entire quantum computing ecosystem,

IBM has already teamed with the University of Tokyo on a project hoped to yield a 100,000-qubit machine, meaning AIST is not unique in its pursuit of colossal quantum kit with IBM's assistance.

On Wednesday, Fujitsu revealed it's sold the Institute a quantum computer.

Fujitsu described the machine as a "gate-based superconducting quantum computer" that is "designed to scale to hundreds of qubits … without upgrading the dilution refrigerators that constitute a superconducting quantum computer." The machine will also feature Fujitsu tech for mounting high-density wiring inside refrigerators and packaging technology for large qubit chips.

HPE CEO Antonio Neri, meanwhile, told Japanese media that the company he leads has scored a $200 million deal to provide the Institute with $200 million worth of servers packing Nvidia's H200 accelerators.

The servers and accelerators will reportedly enhance the Institute's ABC1 super - a machine currently making do with 960 A100 GPUs, plus 4,352 of the ancient V100 processors Nvidia launched way back in 2017.

Just what the Institute will do with all its new kit isn't known. But as the org has a mission to work on "the creation and practical realization of technologies useful to Japanese industry and society, and on 'bridging' the gap between innovative technological seeds and commercialization" it clearly has many roles in which capable computers might help. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/06/19/aist_japan_quantum_computer_nvidia_upgrade/