Quantum computing is coming to a data center near you

Quantum computers can solve problems that that classical machines can't. Cmpanies like Nvidia and Microsoft have already built its infrastructure

Photo by Sven Hoppe/picture alliance via Getty Images

For years, AI data centers and quantum computing have been covered as separate stories with separate problems. One is about gigawatts, grid strain, and utility fights over who pays for the buildout. The other is about lab physics, cryogenic cooling, and breakthroughs that are always a decade away.

That separation has started to collapse. Microsoft $MSFT has been pushing a quantum processor designed to fit into standard server rack footprints. IBM $IBM has a quantum computer running next to a classical supercomputer. And NVIDIA this month launched Ising, a family of open source AI models built specifically to manage the errors that plague quantum hardware, pitched as the path to what the company is calling "quantum GPU supercomputing."

It's a notable shift for a technology that has spent a decade being covered mostly as a lab curiosity or a cybersecurity threat. Quantum is moving into the infrastructure conversation because the infrastructure is there.

A different tool for a different job

There's an assumption (and sometimes a pitch) that quantum will do for AI what GPUs did. Drop in, speed things up, change the economics. That's not what the people actually building these systems say.

What they describe is a different category of machine. Quantum........

© Quartz