Details
- Pasqal has inaugurated SOL, a 140-qubit Orion neutral-atom quantum processing unit at CINECA in Bologna, marking Italy’s first neutral-atom quantum computer and Pasqal’s third EuroHPC-linked system in Europe.
- The system is hosted by CINECA, Italy’s largest public supercomputing operator and ICSC member, and co-funded by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking and Italy’s Ministry of University and Research through ICSC.
- SOL is tightly integrated with the Leonardo pre-exascale EuroHPC supercomputer, exposing the QPU as a native HPC resource via Pasqal’s integration stack, QRMI, and support for NVIDIA CUDA-Q and IBM’s Qiskit.
- This deployment follows earlier Pasqal systems Jade (Germany) and Ruby (France) under the EuroHPC HPCQS pilot, together forming a federated hybrid HPC–quantum infrastructure for workloads in materials science, optimization, and machine learning.
- The inauguration aligns with Europe’s 2025 Quantum Strategy and broader EuroHPC efforts to build sovereign, scalable hybrid supercomputing capabilities, positioning Pasqal as a key neutral-atom provider to European research and industry users.
Impact
The SOL deployment strengthens Europe’s move toward hybrid HPC–quantum architectures, giving researchers and enterprises practical access to quantum acceleration within existing supercomputing workflows. Over the next 12–24 months, this model is likely to drive more EuroHPC-backed installations, deepen integration with ecosystems like CUDA-Q and Qiskit, and accelerate industrial and scientific experimentation with neutral-atom quantum computing at scale.
