#Compute
General Overview
The #compute – computational component of NOUS focuses on connecting to the HPC Network, and creating an interface between Quantum Computers and HPC. The specific objectives of this component are to design the optimum of I/O communication architecture between HPC and NOUS, to achieve high-speed, error-free and seamless classical large data exchange between HPC and NOUS, to develop a software environment for encoding of classical large datasets to qubit-ready format for processing in a quantum computer and to develop unconventional and novel cybersecurity architectures.
Applied tools and Methodology
Algorithm optimisation will be performed on the HPC. Offload approaches such as OpenMP will be adopted and non-interpreted approaches directly in C/C++ will be followed. Furthermore, a variety of Zero Trust trials and security evaluations will be executed before releasing the framework to production environments. Secure endpoints will be established among the involved tools/modules. A gradual approach will be designed and followed: to identify the most sensitive and critical workflows and then to scale the deployment. CI/CD pipelines will be used to ensure data and user permissions and allow controlled fine-tuning.
Solution
Achieve operational high-speed, secure and error-free data exchange between HPC and a (simulated) cloud environment (NOUS). Determine requirements for using HPC nodes as the computational component of a cloud infrastructure using information from interviews with HPC nodes. Development of an environment allowing easy, fast and secure exchange of (big) data between NOUS and a quantum computer.
Develop the quantum data encoding scheme and demonstrate loading of data and encoding to qubits. Determine and explore the capability of using Quantum Machine Learning in collaboration with the Federated Learning system of Objective. Design the I/O interface and define requirements for the NOUS architecture. Design and develop the NOUS cyber-security component as a standalone software to be used in cloud networking environments. Demonstrate the cybersecurity software’s capabilities using a cloud environment.
Impact
Utilise the network of existing HPCs and Quantum computers from different providers for high performance computations that allow solving extraordinarily complex problems (e.g., climate change forecasting, the synthesis of new drugs or the creation of new, more energy-efficient materials) The importance of this challenge lies in delivering a cloud service built for the European economy; a cloud service that fosters excellence in science and the development of highly performant digital services.
Our European economy is focused on “Excellence in Science”. The HPC network was created in that direction however, the major issue is how to assist scientists convert their ideas from a research project to a commercial product. This is an endeavour for any scientist and various organisations in Europe already provide non technological tools to assist in this transition. The NOUS project will tackle the technological aspect for the above while providing an HPC-QC interface that can greatly enhance computational capabilities while assisting programmers who need to consider the unique architecture of any specific QC operating during the NISQ era.
