Focus Industrial Applications
On the application side the QAPPS consortium is focused on the collaboration with industrial partners. We analyze problem sets and application scenarios of our partners and develop together pilot solutions using state of the art quantum machines of our technology partners. In R&D projects application scenarios are formalized, algorithms to approach them are implemented and evaluated.

Goals:
QAPPS is dedicated to prepare Saxony as a location for business and industry towards the future application of the quantum computing technology in innovative products and services.

Focus Foundations and Education
On the research and education side the QAPPS consortium is focused on scientific questions in the field of quantum computation and quantum information and its future directions. Besides research work on the foundations of the field, we build up a knowledge base about the current techniques and algorithms to provide education and training at universities and for interested partners.

Goals:
QAPPS aims to prepare specialists for the upcoming quantum revolution by providing sustainable education in the field and establish Saxony as leading center for quantum computing.

Fraunhofer and the QAPPS consortium collaborate exclusively with IBM as hardware and technology partner. Together with our industrial partners we have immediate access to the latest and most powerful available quantum devices. As subcontractor those devices are also available to our research and development as well as industrial partners. The field develops very dynamically. In Ehningen, Baden-Württemberg, a 27-qubit machine is available, which can be used by Fraunhofer and its partners exclusively.

IBM aims to improve the performance of ist devices according tot he road map below. It shows, e.g., how the number of Qubits is planned to increase towards 1121 qubits in 2023. At the same time also the so called quantum volume of the devices will increase, which is widely seen as a measure for the computational power of a quantum computer. While the initial plan was to double the quantum volume every year for at least the next 10 years, the current planning seems to be even much more ambitious.

© IBM Research "IBM Quantum Development Roadmap" (CC licenses 4.0)

Not visible so well in the grapics is the connection architecture of the qubits within the quantum processor. Here a heavy-hexagonal structure has been chosen to be able to implement the heavy-hexagonal error correcting code later on. In the roadmap it is also visible that the current planning is to stack several 1121 qubit structures starting in 2024 on the journey towards the one million qubit goal. This value is seen as a realm in which error correction is working well, since 1000 qubits are a value which is currently considered for the number of physical qubits necessary to produce one stable error correcting qubit. In this sense a one million (physical) qubits quantum computer could offer about 1000 error corrected stable qubits. This is widely considered as a roboust machine for a different class of quantum algorithms – beyond the current NISQ era (noisy intermediate-scale quantum) of quantum computing.

Beyond the hardware level, the roadmap also informs about the development at kernel level and algorithm level. The works with quantum circuits will become more flexible and more general. Beyond the different available application modules, the connection between quantum computing and classical HPC will form another form of hybrid approach of quantum-classical computation and the application modules will be available in modelling environments for better applicability.

Besides exclusive collaboration with IBM, QAPPS consortium also works together with industrial partners using other quantum devices, e.g. quantum annealers – DWave or Fujitsu Digital Annealer, quantum cloud services such as Amazon Braket or Azure Quantum and hence devices of e.g. Rigetti or IonQ.