Riyadh - Sharikat Mubasher: Aramco’s Upstream Digital Center (UDC) launched one of the region’s largest quantum computing emulators, Dammam-7Q (DMM7Q), using the Dammam-7 Supercomputer accelerated by NVIDIA graphical processing units (GPUs)

This milestone marks a significant moment in accelerating technological breakthroughs in the quest for energy, according to a recent statement by Aramco.

Aramco and NVIDIA joined efforts to explore utilizing an algorithm called the quantum Hadamard edge detection, designed to take advantage of tomorrow’s quantum processors to enhance the details in subsurface images.

Ashraf Al-Tahini, Vice President of Upstream Digital Center, said: “Driven by the Upstream Digital Transformation, UDC aims to innovate at the frontier with Quantum Computing, through our collaboration with NVIDIA, delivering groundbreaking innovations to harness the power of the Hybrid Supercomputers of tomorrow.”

For his part, Tim Costa, Senior Director of CAE, Quantum and CUDA-X at NVIDIA, stated: “Our work with Aramco shows how transformative applications can be discovered when quantum researchers have the right platform for accessing accelerated computing.”

To accelerate quantum computing adoption, Aramco leverages the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform to run GPU-accelerated emulations of future quantum computing hardware, allowing it to develop and assess quantum algorithms that can be used for geosciences.

The CUDA-Q enabled Aramco to explore how actual quantum algorithms will run on hybrid systems that leverage both conventional processors like CPUs and GPUs, alongside quantum hardware, by simplifying the distribution of computational tasks between these different coprocessors.