Summary
Forschungszentrum Jülich has fully simulated a universal 50-qubit quantum computer on Europe’s first exascale supercomputer, JUPITER. The run used on the order of 2 petabytes of memory and surpasses the previous 48-qubit record from 2019. It delivers a powerful, controllable testbed for quantum algorithms at a scale that current hardware cannot sustain.
This was enabled by NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips with unified CPU-GPU memory, and upgrades to the Jülich Universal Quantum Computer Simulator (JUQCS). The team offloaded overflow data to CPU memory with little performance loss, applied on-the-fly compression that cut memory needs by roughly eightfold, and used a dynamic algorithm to coordinate more than 16,000 GH200 nodes. That made it possible to represent the full 2^50 state vector, over 2 quadrillion complex amplitudes.
Why it matters for security leaders: exascale simulation lets teams prototype and stress-test quantum algorithms, estimate realistic resource counts for algorithms such as Shor or Grover, and refine error-correction models before hardware matures. It strengthens benchmarking and reproducibility, helping CISOs cut through hype and adjust PQC migration timelines with better data. The result is a clearer view of near-term quantum capabilities and a safer path to deploying quantum-secure systems.
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See the original article at: https://postquantum.com/industry-news/julich-50-qubit/