• UK’s leading minds in Quantum Computing demonstrate the latest, cutting-edge quantum technologies and provide key feedback on the challenges associated with integrating quantum systems into secure and technically advanced data centre environments.
• High performance infrastructure provider Kao Data hosts the consortium, and showcases its leading UK data centre platform – precision engineered for the next generation of HPC, AI and Quantum computing solutions.

2nd March, 2023 – London, United Kingdom – Kao Data, the specialist developer and operator of high-performance data centres for enterprise, cloud, HPC and AI, is proud to share that this week it has hosted the UK’s ‘Quantum Data Centre of the Future’ project led by ORCA Computing at its Harlow campus in the UK Innovation Corridor.

Kao Data was chosen as the venue for the Quantum Data Centre of the Future demonstration, with our KLON-01 data centre already hosting some of the UK’s most advanced, high performance computing infrastructure systems including NVIDIA’s Cambridge-1 supercomputer.

During the event, ORCA Computing invited a select group of organisations to Kao Data’s KLON-01 facility to see the latest demonstrations of cutting-edge quantum technology and provide feedback on the key challenges associated with integrating quantum technologies into secure and technically advanced data centre environments. Visitors included industry associations such as techUK, Russell Group universities, data centre providers and end-users from across the intensive computing community.

Backed by the UK Government, which provided a grant of £11.6 million, the largest single award for a quantum project, the Quantum Data Centre of the Future project is a consortium of organisations and universities with 14 industry-leading experts among its collaborators. Partners across the project will work together to develop a vision for how quantum communication and computing systems will effortlessly integrate with classical data centres, and aims to establish a blueprint for the quantum data centre of the future.

The project has been spearheaded by ORCA computing, with BT and KETS as work package leads in architecture and communications. Other partners include Riverlane, PQ Shield, NCC group, BP, Digital Catapult, National Composites Centre (NCC), University College London, University of Bristol, Imperial College London, the University of Bath, and University of Southampton.

Demonstrations from the event included:

• ORCA Computing’s PT-1 quantum computer, which combines the natural mapping of photonics with neural networks, ideally suited for integration into classical computing infrastructure and workflows.
• KETS Quantum Security’s demonstration of its key distribution for secure communication.
• Riverlane’s quantum resource estimation tool, which generates quantum circuits that can be read directly by a quantum computer.
• Bristol University also demonstrated its’ prototype of multi-quantum user access.
• While Bath University presented its low loss hollow core fibre prototype.

Attendees also provided valuable feedback on the challenges of integrating quantum technologies into secure, high performance data centre environments, as well as creating a hybrid quantum-classical environment within the data centre.

The Quantum Data Centre of the Future project marks a step towards the development of a quantum internet, ensuring that it can function as well with digital information as the internet model currently in place. As quantum technologies mature and show promise for solving near-term problems, it is critical that the significant near-term value created with quantum/classical hybrid systems be available at scale.

“Demo days this week have been packed full of insightful discussion and have provided us with crucial feedback from some of the most important organisations within the UK data centre, HPC and Quantum community,” said Dr David Hall, Head of Delivery, ORCA Computing. “Being able to showcase our Quantum systems at Kao Data, which already hosts some of the country’s leading supercomputing, HPC and machine learning applications, has been a wonderful experience, and we look forward to sharing new advances at next year’s Quantum Data Centre of the Future event.”

Commenting on the event, Kao Data CEO Lee Myall said, “We were delighted to host the UK’s leading minds in Quantum Computing at our Harlow campus and that our team was able to witness the latest wave of disruptive technologies that will force a new revolution in data centre design, performance, and operations.”

To learn more about the quantum photonic systems showcased by ORCA during the event, please click here.