Spain has unveiled its third quantum supercomputer, a 9.8-million-euro investment aimed at speeding up research and artificial intelligence (AI). The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) has added a third quantum computer, which will be integrated into the MareNostrum 5 system, capable of combining classical supercomputing, artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
The new machine has been designed and built by Barcelona-based company Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech and funded by the European Commission and Spain’s Secretariat of State for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence. It is an analogue quantum computer, unlike the two previously installed quantum computers, which are digital.
While classical computers work with bits – which at any given moment can only be 0 or 1 – quantum computing uses qubits, which can represent both states at once. This capability makes it possible to develop far more powerful algorithms and tackle problems that conventional computers can barely solve.
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The BSC’s three quantum computers are housed in the chapel of Torre Girona, the same space that hosted the first four versions of the MareNostrum supercomputer between 2005 and 2023.
