Producing quantum chips on silicon would - in theory - give Europe greater sovereignty over these cutting-edge technologies. But researchers will have to stabilise the quantum bits and miniaturise them so that they can be cooled with helium-3 without spending a fortune. Source: QuTech

Producing quantum chips on silicon would - in theory - give Europe greater sovereignty over these cutting-edge technologies. But researchers will have to stabilise the quantum bits and miniaturise them so that they can be cooled with helium-3 without spending a fortune. Source: QuTech

On Monday morning, the ministers for the economy, Lex Delles, and for digitalisation, Stéphanie Obertin, presented Meluxina-Q, Luxembourg's quantum computer. With a relatively modest initial ambition (10 qbits), this much more powerful 'brain' than the HPC Meluxina will be based on silicon and will reach 80 qbits two years later.

Meluxina has fallen 39 places in the world supercomputer rankings. In just two years. Luxprovide nevertheless ended 2023 on a high note, with profits of more than one million euros. 80% to 90% of its computing time is used by 2,250 users in 650 projects, a third of which are European, a large third by national research and the rest by Irish research or companies in the space (such as the Japanese space agency), finance or health sectors. Even the Italian Giorgio Parisi, who is due to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2021, came to test his theories on the Luxembourg supercomputer.

The fall to 89th place in the world is not so serious. It just goes to show two things: that Luxembourg's competitors are well and truly engaged in an electronic arms race, and that we need to nurture very high ambitions if we are to remain in the European (or global) technological locomotive.

€17m co-funded by the EU

This is precisely where the government is taking a risky gamble. Luxembourg’s freshly announced quantum computer, named Meluxina-Q for consistency rather than originality, and seventh in the list of the top ten quantum computers that the EU has agreed to co-finance, will be based on silicon. The total of €17m will be invested in a technology for which Europe has full control of the supply chain, as , CEO of Luxprovide, and (DP), minister for economic affairs, pointed out. And it must be scalable - capable of being developed on a large scale within five years, with commissioning scheduled for 2026. The Luxembourg silicon chip will be able to be etched to achieve eight times the power within two years of the launch of this computer, which is much smaller than Meluxina in size but much more "concentrated", and is also housed at Luxconnect.

In 2023, Europe produced 400,000 tonnes of silicon metal, mainly in Norway (40%), France and Germany. Worldwide, 70% of production (8 to 9 million tonnes a year) is concentrated in China.

"If those developing this technology were able to stabilise the qbits, having 50 qbits would be enough to beat the most powerful quantum computers in Europe", says Gustav Kolbe, acting director of the European Commission's DG Connect. Because with the incredible volumes of simultaneous operations of these computers of the future, quantum bits are extremely sensitive to their environment, be it heat or electromagnetic radiation. Researchers therefore need to find a way of ensuring that each bit is as stable as possible to avoid errors or malfunctions. Miniaturising chips is also a major challenge, because they need to be cooled efficiently using helium-3 (close to absolute zero). However, this material is rare on Earth and usually comes from nuclear reactors or dismantled nuclear weapons.

It's a gamble because nobody really knows today whether it will work as planned. "Europe is investing in different technologies around quantum computing so as not to miss out on any opportunities," said EuroHPC JU executive director Anders Jensen. "And different technologies will be able to be used in different contexts."

Cutting-edge research laboratories

Who will Luxembourg and EuroHPC JU - which is housed at the Cloche d'or and is co-financing part of the computing capacity - buy the computer from? It's still a mystery. The answer is evasive, but without claiming to be exhaustive, a number of projects are emerging that are working on this technology, such as Qutech, a collaborative research centre between Delft University of Technology and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, Oxford University, the Belgian Institute for Microelectronics and Components, and Equal1Labs, an Irish startup founded with University College Dublin.

For the economy minister, investment in this technology is part of the development of the triple strategy around data, artificial intelligence and quantum. "Many researchers are convinced that we are about to enter a quantum era. And this prototype should prepare Luxembourg to attract the experts and researchers we need to develop our economy and make our country more attractive,” Dellas said at a press conference on 21 October 2024.

A wide range of uses

The minister for digitalisation, research and higher education, (DP), emphasised the need to "stay at the international cutting edge", citing initiatives in the fields of finance, fintech, data analysis, quantum trading, personalised medicine, the development of new intelligent materials, and cybersecurity in the medical and pharmaceutical sectors.

Two of the most interesting projects to follow today are the initiative involving SES, the world leader in satellite connectivity, which is working on a system for distributing quantum keys by light from a satellite, which would make message encryption inviolable due to the physical properties of light. Or the still-secret quantum trading project being worked on by Thibaut Britz, one of the founders of Talkwalker.

Read the French-language version of this news report

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