Diraq puts eight-qubit quantum computer into Equinix's Sydney data centre

Diraq has put a silicon spin quantum computer into a commercial Equinix data centre in Sydney, where it is running with eight qubits. Diraq and Equinix present it as Australia's first quantum computer in a commercial data centre. Diraq said it aims to grow the deployed system to as many as 256 qubits over the next year.

The present machine uses under 20 kW and occupies 16 square metres of floor space. Diraq expects a utility-scale system to need around 300 kW, which it says is under a third of what one next-generation AI rack demands, and to take up as little as five square metres. The company said the small, low-power profile is meant to spare data centres the expensive and disruptive build-outs that other quantum technologies would need.

Diraq makes its silicon spin architecture with the same semiconductor processes used for ordinary computer chips. It said customers could add computing power by swapping in a newer quantum processor while changing little else around it. Diraq chief executive and founder Andrew Dzurak said the approach offers "a manufacturing path already proven at industrial scale, a cost curve that improves as we add qubits, and a system designed to run inside today's existing computing infrastructure."

Jarrod Nink, managing director for Australia at Equinix, said the deployment "represents an important milestone for Australia's quantum industry". Equinix said hosting the machine lays groundwork for quantum systems to link up with the cloud, AI and high-performance computing environments enterprises already use.

Diraq also released a report, Quantum at Work, looking at how quantum computing could contribute in medicine, energy, materials, climate and transport. Diraq's modelling, drawing on a 2010 industry cost study in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, suggests a 10 percentage point improvement in clinical trial success rates could lift the number of medicines reaching patients each year by about 50 per cent. It also says that improvement could save $600 million per medicine, provided the quantum computer costs less than $65 million a year to run. Diraq said it is aiming for utility-scale systems costing no more than tens of millions of dollars, and argued that many rival architectures get dearer as they scale because of cooling, wiring and control needs.

The Sydney installation comes after backing from the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation earlier in the year for Diraq's advanced manufacturing in Australia. Diraq has also reached Stage C of DARPA's Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, which carries potential funding of up to US$300 million. It has signed a US$38 million letter of intent with the US Department of Commerce under the CHIPS and Science Act.