ORCA Computing, which is building photonic quantum computers for quantum-accelerated AI, today launched the PT-3, the newest generation of its photonic quantum computers. The first system is live in the Digital Realty Innovation Lab (DRIL) in London, where it runs alongside NVIDIA accelerated computing.
Quantum and AI for science
Harnessing AI to transform scientific discovery is rapidly emerging as one of the most important new categories in computing and a major industry-wide focus, yet it is held back by limited training data. ORCA’s PT-3 works alongside GPUs, aiming to increase the expressivity of AI models (their ability to represent complex patterns and data distributions) and to help them learn more from limited data in order to identify better, more novel candidates for new drugs and materials.
ORCA says PT-3 has allowed it to generate results from a hybrid quantum-classical extension of NVIDIA Proteína, the generative model for protein design. The model was trained on 32 NVIDIA Hopper GPUs working with a PT-3 using 64 photons in 128 qumodes, and, ORCA claims, showed enhanced designability over the classical baseline, improving the ratio of useful proteins by 20%, and generated novel proteins with a different mix of secondary structures.
This builds on earlier life sciences results from ORCA’s PT-2 system. Working with the Technical University of Denmark, the company says PT-2 produced around twice as many strong peptide binders as classical AI, validated in the wet lab. It also generated 49% more valid, unique molecules on the QM9 benchmark, a foundational dataset and standard testbed in quantum chemistry and molecular machine learning.
According to ORCA, the PT-3 is also being applied to optimisation problems such as smarter energy scheduling. Earlier this year, JIJ Inc. and ORCA, in collaboration with bp and the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC), published a white paper that benchmarked hybrid approaches to the unit commitment problem.
Richard Murray, Co-founder and CEO of ORCA Computing, said: “By integrating our photonic quantum computer with NVIDIA accelerated computing, we have taken a critical first step in the future of hybrid quantum supercomputing. The PT-3 is already delivering results in AI for science and industrial optimisation, from protein design to energy scheduling. Through Digital Realty, enterprise users can now put it to work on their most challenging workloads, and customers are trialling use cases in life sciences, defence, energy and logistics. The PT-3 is built to scale: it upgrades in the field, so customers who start today keep building on the same system.”
“With the PT-3, ORCA is bringing photonic quantum computing and NVIDIA accelerated computing together in a system researchers can use to develop and test new applications,” said Sam Stanwyck, Director of Quantum Product at NVIDIA. “The value of a computing platform is in what researchers build on it. ORCA’s extension of NVIDIA’s Proteína model to generate a different range of protein structures with improved designability is a great example of what can be accomplished when these tools come together.”
“Our partnership with ORCA reflects a shared ambition to make quantum computing practical for business. Hosting the PT-3 in the DRIL gives us a real-world environment to explore how quantum can deliver value today, and it’s a significant step towards commercial quantum advantage at scale,” said Séamus Dunne, Managing Director, UK & Ireland, Digital Realty.
