Paris-based Alice & Bob taps NVIDIA CUDA-Q to give quantum simulations a speed boost

Paris-based Alice & Bob, a quantum computing startup, announced a new development: the integration of the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform with their simulation library, Dynamiqs.

The announcement was made during the NVIDIA GTC Paris keynote at VivaTech. CUDA-Q is NVIDIA’s open-source quantum development platform for hybrid quantum-classical supercomputing.

“CUDA-Q’s GPU acceleration opens up new possibilities for fast, scalable, and intelligent quantum system design and analysis,” says Tim Costa, senior director of Quantum and CUDA-X at NVIDIA. “By combining this with its other capabilities, Dynamiqs is helping provide researchers with access to the state-of-the-art in accelerated computing that they need for practical breakthroughs in quantum research.”

On the other hand, Dynamiqs is an open-source library from Alice & Bob that provides high-speed simulations of quantum systems.

By using GPU technology, it allows researchers to quickly simulate both open and closed quantum systems, including rapidly changing systems like Quantum Processing Units (QPUs).

This library makes it possible to simulate larger systems and efficiently test various conditions much faster than before.

Boosts efficiency of large-scale simulation by up to 75x

This combination outperforms the most widely used libraries today, accelerating the simulation of complex quantum dynamics by up to 75x, on early benchmarks.

“Simulation is a critical step in the development of useful quantum processors, allowing us to understand how these complex quantum systems behave,” says Théau Peronnin, CEO of Alice & Bob. “Thanks to the integration with NVIDIA CUDA-Q, Dynamiqs can now run these simulations even faster, speeding up the development of our QPUs.”

Besides speed, Dynamiqs also provides researchers with new tools. It allows them to use automatic differentiation to calculate how changes in input parameters affect simulation outcomes.

This is important for several key tasks, including:

• Quantum Optimal Control: Helping steer the system to a desired state accurately.
• Parameter Estimation: Discovering unknown properties from data.
• Quantum State Tomography: Rebuilding the quantum state from measurements.

Alice & Bob: Building fault-tolerant quantum computer

Led by Théau Peronnin, Alice & Bob is a quantum computing company that aims to create a 

universal, fault-tolerant quantum computer.

Since its inception in 2020, it has raised €130M, hired over 100 employees, and achieved better experimental results than big companies like Google and IBM.

The French company focuses on cat qubits, a unique technology developed by its founders and later adopted by Amazon.

Recently, they demonstrated that their technology could cut the hardware needed for a large-scale quantum computer by up to 200 times compared to other methods.