By Stephen Nellis
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 29 (Reuters) – New Mexico officials on Tuesday launched a shared quantum computing research facility to bring together the two US national labs in the state with private companies.
The Roadrunner Quantum Lab, as it is called, is a 35,000-square-foot (3,252-square-meter) facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that will have features such as concrete floors several feet thick and dilution refrigerators, cryogenic cooling units that keep quantum computers so cold that atoms barely move.
The outpost is the first concrete step in an effort to direct hundreds of millions of dollars into quantum computing, which could help solve problems that would take conventional computers thousands of years.
Two of the initial tenants will be Sandia and Los Alamos National Labs, two of the three US labs that develop and maintain the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal. The labs will provide independent scientific expertise and set up a Quantum Demonstration Facility to help the private firms in the facility build and evaluate quantum systems.
“The idea is to help take technology we’ve done at the labs, and help them commercialize and become successful companies,” Rob Black, the secretary of economic development for New Mexico, said in an interview. “That’s how we scale to ensure the US leads in these very important technologies.”
The private companies at the facility will include Diraq, IonQ, Quantum Machines, Conductor Quantum, Mesa Quantum, QBoltz, Photon Queue and QuEra.
Adam Hammer, CEO of Roadrunner Venture Studios, which received state funding to lead the effort around the facility, said it was in part inspired by Taiwan’s 1980s push to develop a semiconductor zone in Hsinchu County, which is now home to both Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co and United Microelectronics Corp.
“The Taiwanese government funded this three-mile industry zone where they put up a lot of the patient capital to create shared manufacturing facilities. And that birthed TSMC. It also birthed their biggest rival, UMC,” Hammer said in an interview. “And it was a feature, not a bug, that they were building elbow to elbow.”
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
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