Abu Dhabi building the Emirates’ first quantum computer

Abu Dhabi is building a quantum computer to create breakthroughs in medicine discovery and battery technology.

Technology Innovation Institute, the applied research arm of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council, is constructing the computer at its Quantum Research Centre labs, in collaboration with Barcelona-based Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech.

“We are at the cusp of a new era with the advent of quantum computing,” said Faisal Al Bannai, Secretary General of the Advanced Technology Research Council. “We are proud to embark on building one of these wonderful machines.”

A quantum computer is a kind of supercomputer.

Quantum computing provides “the ability to condense decades or even centuries of number-crunching into minutes”, a report compiled by the World Government Summit and PwC said.

The field represents a dramatic shift in computing power that will shape the future security and prosperity of nations and companies.

Jose Ignacio Latorre, chief researcher at the Quantum Research Centre labs, said work was already under way and the aim was to make the first “made in Abu Dhabi” quantum chips by the end of the summer.

“The first step in the process is to build a laboratory, equip it and complete installation of the cleanroom equipment, all of which is on track,” he said.

It will be the first quantum computer in the UAE.

Mr Latorre said the lab in Abu Dhabi had chosen to use superconducting qubits, the same technology that Google and IBM are using to build their quantum computers.

Supercomputers have been becoming exponentially faster since they were introduced in the 1960s, taking on complex problems in fields such as climate research, oil and gas exploration and molecular modelling to help discover new drugs and materials.

Quantum computing is newer and was popularised by theoretical physicist John Preskill. It goes beyond the binary realm of 1s and 0s to achieve more capacity and speed.