Nvidia and the Jülich Supercomputing Centre have successfully simulated a 50-qubit universal quantum computer using classical hardware. The achievement was announced on November 11, 2025, and utilized Europe’s first exascale supercomputer, JUPITER, which was inaugurated in September 2025.
The simulation required processing a state vector of over 2 quadrillion complex amplitudes. The JUPITER system relies on Nvidia GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips, which utilize a hybrid memory architecture to allow CPUs and GPUs to share a larger memory pool than a standalone GPU could access.
Researchers upgraded the Jülich Universal Quantum Computer Simulator to version JUQCS-50, implementing enhanced CPU offloading, eightfold memory requirement compression, and improved network traffic management. These software optimizations resulted in a 16.6-fold speedup compared to the previous 48-qubit record set in 2019.
The project was conducted under the JUREAP program and integrated into the JUNIQ facility. By simulating a noise-free quantum environment, researchers can test algorithms and error correction methods without the interference typically present in physical quantum hardware.
