DOE Opens Applications for $215M Genesis Mission Competition

The Energy Department is seeking to realize one of the key components of the Genesis Mission with a new funding effort to build the world’s first fault-tolerant scientifically relevant quantum computer (SRQC).

Called the Quantum Genesis Q Competition, the initiative is accepting applications from vendors through Oct. 19 and will award up to $215 million.

Energy Under Secretary for Science Darío Gil told reporters during a press call that the team received ample feedback through town halls, roundtables and requests for information that indicated quantum computing on the order of 100 logical qubits was achievable within this decade.

“If we have the opportunity as a country to deliver a SRQC in this time frame, it’s a shot worth taking, and we’re very willing to take the risk,” said Gil. “I know the community wants to do this. I think the beauty of this program, it’s a way to find out by building this scientific capability, which has always been true of the experiments that come out of the Office of Science.”

Competition Phases Bring Industry, National Labs Together

The competition has three phases and requires participants to meet milestones throughout the process. Phase I features a fixed award for early milestones, up to $1.5 million per awardee, and phase II is a $100 million general incentive pool split among awardees that demonstrates a first-generation SRQC with at least 100 logical qubits. Phase II also features two bonus incentive pools of $50 million each for awardees that demonstrate 150 and 200 logical qubits.

The third phase will create a user test bed facility after DOE published a call specifically for the national labs to participate in the Quantum High-Performance Computing Validation and Verification Testbed Lab. The testbed will draw on the expertise of DOE national laboratories to establish the tools needed to test and validate the entire computing stack of SRQCs.

Tanner Crowder, quantum information science lead and senior technical advisor for advanced scientific computing research, said the testbed will provide the foundation to integrate SRQCs into the DOE’s scientific ecosystem.

“This testbed will allow these instruments to be used for scientific discovery and not be the scientific discovery themselves and that’s the ultimate goal of this program,” said Crowder. “We hope to see meaningful contributions to our scientific ecosystem and really pave the way to understand how quantum computers are going to integrate with our high-performance computing capabilities.”

Crowder added that competitors will only receive payment rewards if they meet competition milestones, which will help verify and validate applicants are able to produce a plan for verification and validation of SRQCs.

“The second milestone is a prototype where they can do small-scale demonstrations and show that they actually have a real, honest-to-goodness path to scale. And the third milestone is a scientifically relevant quantum computer,” said Crowder. “Our goal is not to have a bunch of qubits that can’t do much. We want to be able to see meaningful scientific calculations done on these quantum computers that are based in the DOE mission space.”