NERSC News: Partner with QuEra For 2026 Quantum Research

NERSC News

In a major development for the quantum computing industry, QuEra Computing has been announced as a featured technology provider for the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) 2026 Research Access Program. This partnership is a significant step toward bringing commercial-grade neutral-atom quantum computing platforms into the demanding, practical scientific research settings that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) supports.

A New Era for National Laboratories

The project is the result of increasing trust in the maturity of next-generation quantum hardware among key research organizations and national laboratories. For many years, quantum systems were mainly considered experimental curiosity, but they are now being acknowledged as useful instruments that can address computational problems that are currently well outside the scope of even the most advanced classical high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure.

The purpose of the NERSC 2026 Call for Proposals is to expressly request workflows that are hardware-aware and HPC-integrated. These workflows, which concentrate on vital fields including materials science, quantum chemistry, energy system modeling, and fundamental physics, are meant to be tightly aligned with the DOE Office of Science’s strategic priorities. Through this call, NERSC is offering scientific companies, national labs, and academic institutions a systematic means to move their experimental workflows to cutting-edge quantum platforms.

The Technology: The Power of Neutral Atoms

QuEra’s distinctive method of quantum processing is the foundation of this collaboration. QuEra uses neutral atoms instead of the superconducting circuits or trapped-ion systems that have dominated much of the early quantum discussion. Laser-based optical tweezers are used to carefully control and organize these atoms, enabling the construction of programmable shapes.

By using this technique, scientists can get atoms to enter Rydberg states, which allow them to interact in certain ways that mimic intricate quantum processes or carry out specialized computational tasks.

There are two main benefits to this strategy that are especially pertinent to the NERSC mission:

Unprecedented Scalability: By arranging hundreds of atoms, neutral-atom platforms enable the simulation of molecular systems and materials science issues at a level of complexity never before possible.
Infrastructure Compatibility: The fact that these systems run at or close to room temperature is one of the biggest useful advantages. This makes neutral-atom technology far more appealing for incorporation into current HPC facilities, such as those at NERSC, by doing away with the necessity for the large, energy-intensive cryogenic cooling systems needed by superconducting computers.

Two Platforms for Diverse Scientific Needs

Two separate QuEra platforms, each with a unique function in the computational ecosystem, will be available to researchers chosen for the program:

Aquila: This analog quantum simulator was created especially to tackle large-scale optimization issues and intricate many-body physics problems.
Gemini: This alternative approach to algorithm development is a gate-based quantum system made to execute programmable quantum circuits.

The program uses a simulation-first validation stage to provide the best possible scientific output. Research teams must show that their algorithms can be executed on physical quantum devices instead of just classical simulations before they are granted live hardware access.

A Structured Roadmap to Discovery

To optimize the use of the available quantum processing unit (QPU) hours, the research program is structured into a two-stage evaluation process.

Stage A: Feasibility Demonstration: Proof of Feasibility Selected teams will begin a preliminary three-month phase in April 2026. Teams using the Aquila system will have access to hardware for up to 12.5 QPU-hours during this time. On the other hand, without direct hardware interface in this early stage, teams utilizing the Gemini system will concentrate their efforts on simulation workflows and algorithm improvement. Determining if a suggested application can provide a significant quantum benefit is the main objective of Stage A.

Stage B: Full Hardware Deployment: Complete Hardware Deployment Projects that pass the first stage’s feasibility test will move on to Stage B, which greatly increases hardware allocations. Gemini projects are given up to 10 QPU-hours of live hardware time during this phase, while Aquila-based projects can receive up to an extra 25 QPU-hours (for a total of 37.5 hours). This methodical methodology guarantees that the most promising scientific investigations receive the limited and extremely important QPU time. All research must be finished by December 2026, and all findings must be publicized in public forums or peer-reviewed publications in accordance with NERSC’s objective as an open laboratory.

Strategic and Economic Implications

This collaboration is an important turning point for QuEra from an investor and industry standpoint. QuEra is establishing its hardware as a sophisticated instrument for the international research community by shifting away from “exploratory trials” and toward production-grade scientific experimentation. QuEra’s credibility in the government, academic, and industrial sectors is significantly increased by its affiliation with NERSC, a facility renowned for its statistically rigorous and HPC-integrated workloads. In the rapidly developing sector of hybrid QC HPC solutions, such credibility is anticipated to stimulate future demand, create new alliances, and create more financing opportunities.

The partnership is not beginning at the beginning. QuEra and NERSC have already worked together on investigations including quantum dynamics simulations and optimization since 2023, with encouraging outcomes indicating that these devices can manage workloads that are challenging to confirm using only classical techniques.

The Future of Hybrid Supercomputing

The NERSC 2026 program’s ultimate objective goes beyond individual discoveries. Its goal is to hasten the creation of quantum-ready algorithms that can grow in size as technology becomes more resilient to errors. In computational science, where hybrid quantum-classical workflows employing quantum processors for intricate simulations and classical supercomputers for data preparation have become the norm, the incorporation of quantum hardware into well-established HPC ecosystems marks a significant turning point.

Additionally, this project is in line with DOE’s larger efforts to get the nation’s infrastructure ready for the expected convergence of exascale supercomputing and quantum computing over the course of the next ten years. The NERSC and QuEra collaboration shows that intermediate-scale systems are already prepared to contribute to the next generation of scientific discoveries, even though a completely fault-tolerant, universal quantum computer may still be years away.

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