With a showcase at our Hamburg Innovation Centre, we wanted to demonstrate what we have created in Hamburg over the last two years: a vibrant ecosystem, the future of compute. The day after – no time to take a deep breath, we are already in the middle of our QCI All Hands 2024 initiative meeting! – we are certain: our plan has worked! But what we hadn’t expected was the enthusiasm and energy with which our visitors wanted to talk about All things Quantum right up to the dismantling. Thank you very much!
What we showed at the Hamburg showcase: Our outstanding technological infrastructure for the industrialisation of quantum computing and the hardware projects that can now use it, all 22 DLR projects and their more than 40 industrial contracts for the development of use cases with real impact and how we as DLR QCI bring this together in a globally unique ecosystem with our innovation centres. Above all, however, we showed all visitors what a strong, vibrant and incredibly diverse ecosystem we have built together.
The very real-world occasion for the showcase was the inauguration of our clean room and laser labs. We have long been active as an innovation centre, but now our hardware contractors have started to set up their quantum computers in our laser labs and use the production capacities in the cleanroom. This infrastructure provides start-ups in particular with an excellent opportunity to manufacture hardware in a globally unique ecosystem and with industrial quality.
However, providing this infrastructure was a feat of strength that we were able to accomplish so well because we had the support of strong partners. That’s why it was important for us to thank these enablers of the Hamburg Innovation Centre: the First Mayor of Hamburg Peter Tschentscher, DLR Executive Board member Karsten Lemmer, Marco-Alexander Breit from the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection, Lars Reger, CTO of NXP Semiconductors and Alois Krtil from the Hamburg Artificial Intelligence Center Hamburg, with whose local initiative hqic we have found a great ally. But of course, we are all part of the ecosystem. And that’s why this jam-packed, loud, vibrant showcase was a clear sign: What we had in mind, what all enablers stand for, works!
After the showcase is now before the showcase: we have now created a unique technological infrastructure for the production of quantum computers and their applications in Hamburg and Ulm. Now it’s time to go live with these infrastructures and build up the urgently needed quantum computing capacities. At the same time, we are working with our application projects, research and industry partners to get into application as quickly as possible and to realise the potential of quantum computers using real, relevant use cases in research and industry. Because this – hardware and application development – runs in parallel at our company, we will be able to make important progress here, which will be reflected in both the hardware and the applications. This is the advantage of developing in a close ecosystem.
We must now realise this potential. At the next showcase, we will demonstrate what we have achieved.