PARIS, Oct. 1, 2021 — The development and the use of quantum technologies are a major growing challenge at national, European and international levels. In this context, GENCI (Grand Équipement National de Calcul Intensif) is contributing to the adoption of quantum technologies to help France achieving the objective set by the President of the Republic on 21 January 2021 when announcing the French National Quantum Plan: “to place France in the first circle of countries that master quantum technologies.”

Engaged with CEA, Inria, CNRS and the CPU as part of the “national strategy on quantum technologies” to host and make available in France the first European infrastructure coupling supercomputers and various quantum acceleration devices, GENCI has also committed itself within a tailored programme called PAck Quantique (PAQ) with the Île de France Region and Le Lab Quantique to promote synergies between industrials, start-ups and academic consortia and ease adoption of this major technological breakthrough.

In line of this dynamic, GENCI is pleased to announce its support as a sponsor and co-organiser of the BIG Quantum Hackathon organised by QuantX.  This commitment was made possible by a shared conviction: the success of quantum technologies will depend on scientific excellence as much as on entrepreneurship. 

This support strengthens the partnership between GENCI and Le Lab Quantique, as well as other stakeholders, aiming to future collaborations and projects, fostering the development of the quantum ecosystem in France, to possibly lead to the development of industrial programmes on concrete use cases.

The BIG Quantum Hackathon

The BIG Quantum Hackathon by QuantX, the first of a kind competition, aims to gather the whole value chain of Quantum Computing and demonstrate its ability to address the real life challenges. During the event, the business world represented by industrial and financial companies, VC/PE investors, and consulting groups will join forces with quantum computing specialists from academia, quantum hardware and software providers to approach a set of longstanding problems from different domains: chemistry, machine learning, optimization, numerical simulations, to name a few. Through establishing a stage for a collaborative problem solving, the BIG Quantum Hackathon will help the participants to investigate the real impact of their work, today’s viability of QC solutions, existing business interest, the priorities, and efforts to be done in the coming years.

The BIG Quantum Hackathon is organized under the patronage of Cedric O – the Minister of State for the Digital Transition and Electronic Communication, and Neil Abroug – the Head of the French National Quantum Strategy. It is supported by BPIfrance – the French Public Investment Bank, Inria – the National Institute for Research in Digital Science and technology, GENCI – the French National High Performance Computing Agency, Quantonation – an early-stage Venture Fund dedicated to Deep Physics startups with a focus on the emerging and disruptive field of Quantum Technologies, and Le Lab Quantique, a Paris based Think Tank and network of bottom-up initiatives.

The Big Quantum Hackathon will take place from 2 to 5 October, in two phases. The technical phase will take place on 2 and 3 October at Inria. The application phase dedicated to companies will be held on 4 and 5 October at Quantonation.

About GENCI

Created by the French government in 2007, GENCI is a large-scale Research Infrastructure, public operator organization that aims to democratize the use of digital simulation through high-performance computing combined with artificial intelligence, to support French scientific and industrial competitiveness.

 GENCI has three missions:

– To implement the national strategy aiming at equipping French scientific open research with high-performance computing, storage and massive data processing resources associated with AI technologies, in conjunction with the three national computing centers;

– To support the creation of an integrated HPC ecosystem on a national and European scale;

– To promote digital simulation and HPC to academic research and industry.

GENCI is a civil company owned 49% by the French government, represented by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, 20% by the CEA, 20% by the CNRS, 10% by the universities represented by the Conference of University Presidents and 1% by Inria.

About QuantX

QuantX is an association of Ecole Polytechnique (X) alumni that counts 150+ quantum computing specialists worldwide: representatives of industrial groups and academia, startups, investors and consulting firms, media, and the government. By gathering the quantum community, QuantX aims to accelerate the QC ecosystem growth, enhance knowledge transfer, help discover new applications, train future quantum engineers and experts, and motivate the forthcoming generations to contribute to the world of quantum computing. QuantX carries the vision that the success of quantum technologies relies on scientific ex- cellence and entrepreneurship. After a series of events establishing the links between different actors, QuantX is looking forward to its next milestone event, BIG Quantum Hackathon, the biggest business-tech competition in the field.

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Source: GENCI