Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) plans an equity investment in PsiQuantum as the companies broaden work on infrastructure for large, fault-tolerant quantum systems and applications that combine quantum, conventional computing and artificial intelligence.
The companies announced the expanded work Nov. 12. AMD plans an equity investment, but the announcement did not disclose the amount, ownership share or timetable.
The companies identified pharmaceutical research and drug discovery as the collaboration’s initial commercial focus. They said early simulations of covalent inhibitors, molecules relevant to oncology, combined PsiQuantum workflows with AMD’s GPU expertise. PsiQuantum said its proprietary computational chemistry methods produced results on AMD hardware that outperformed the leading calculations available today. The announcement did not cite independent validation for that performance claim.
The expanded work extends PsiQuantum’s existing use of AMD Versal field-programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs, as it develops its platform. It adds AMD Instinct GPUs, EPYC CPUs and ROCm software alongside PsiQuantum’s silicon photonics technology. The companies aim to design infrastructure and applications that bring quantum computing together with high-performance computing and AI. They framed the expansion as a way to connect conventional computing and AI resources with photonic quantum technology as systems grow.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Quantum Genesis Priority Applications initiative identifies eight scientific problems for fault-tolerant quantum computing and lists biochemistry as an emerging application area. AMD and PsiQuantum linked their drug discovery focus to that program.
AMD Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster said classical computing leadership is “essential to building systems at scale.”
Another quantum-computing effort involving AMD was announced Nov. 5, when IBM and Oak Ridge National Laboratory joined the chipmaker in a platform for testing quantum error correction.
AMD and PsiQuantum said they would explore a larger collaboration footprint at the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park in Chicago, where PsiQuantum is the anchor tenant. They plan to share more about the partnership at SC26, which runs Sunday through Friday, Nov. 15-20, in Chicago.
