The UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC), in partnership with Innovate UK, has published its comprehensive Quantum Computing Testbed Initiative (QCTI) Phase 1 Report, confirming the physical deployment, commissioning, and operational delivery of seven commercial quantum computing testbeds at the Harwell Campus. Financed through a £30 million Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) award, the multi-year program established the NQCC as an institutional “alpha customer,” providing the UK with a centralized national laboratory capable of evaluating multiple quantum hardware architectures under uniform operational conditions.
| NQCC QCTI Phase 1 Deployed Testbeds & Technical Specifications | ||
|---|---|---|
| Provider & System | Physical Qubit Modality | Deployed Architecture & Key Technical Metrics |
| Aegiq (Artemis) | Integrated Photonics | Deterministic single-photon source architecture integrated into standard 19-inch data-center racks; hybrid semiconductor photonic circuit routing. |
| Infleqtion UK (Sqale) | Neutral Atom Tweezer Array | 16×16 qubit site geometry providing in situ entanglement via Rydberg state excitation; delivers a 100-qubit operational system with universal gate capabilities. |
| ORCA Computing (Asteroidea) | Integrated Photonics / Boson Sampling | Multi-source architecture combining quantum dots, cavity-enhanced SPDC, and squeezed vacuum with an embedded GPU; features a 2 MHz processor with 4-time-bin overclocking. |
| Oxford Ionics (IonQ) (QuARTET) | Trapped Ions | Barium-133/137 ions with on-chip electronic control; achieved > 10 s coherence times, 99.97(3)% SPAM fidelity, and a chassis engineered to support in-field QPU upgrades up to 256 qubits. |
| Quantum Motion (QM One) | Silicon Spin Qubits | Industrial 300 mm wafer-scale CMOS foundry-manufactured spin-qubit QPU; fully automated drift-calibration software compatible with Qiskit, Cirq, and PennyLane. |
| QuEra UK (Generation-4 / CAST) | Neutral Atom Tweezer Array | Zoned shuttling architecture separating memory and gate execution; > 200 physical qubits across 2,000 register sites with > 99% atom initialization and 150 μs shuttling times. |
| Rigetti UK (Ankaa-class / HERMES) | Superconducting Circuits | 24-qubit 4×6 square lattice upgraded to 36 qubits (6×6 lattice) with 38 tunable couplers; integrated with Riverlane’s Deltaflow decoder and OmegaStar controls for real-time QEC. |
The conclusion of Phase 1 transitions the program into Phase 2: Testbed Technical Evaluation (TTE), scheduled to run through Q2 2027 in collaboration with the Quantum Software Lab (QSL) at the University of Edinburgh. While Phase 1 focused on facility readiness, on-site commissioning, and overcoming logistics—such as QuEra’s installation of a dedicated cleanroom facility and Rigetti’s nine-month deployment—Phase 2 implements independent benchmarking regimes to verify system-level metrics, investigate noise dynamics, and assess suitability for specific computational classes.
The technical framework divides Phase 2 into two primary project categories:
- Building Block Projects: Led by the QSL alongside hardware teams, these initiatives address the mathematical and algorithmic foundations of early fault-tolerant operations, including hardware-tailored error-mitigation schemes, syndrome decoding latency, and verifiable quantum advantage metrics.
- Pipeline Projects: Managed by NQCC applications engineers, these applied workflows map complex problems in Hamiltonian simulation, combinatorial optimization, and quantum machine learning to the specific physical strengths of the deployed modalities.
Beyond technical hardware delivery, the report highlights the economic catalytic impact of the lead-customer model. Companies participating in the testbed cohort raised approximately $715 million in private venture funding in 2025 alone, alongside major corporate consolidation including IonQ’s acquisition of Oxford Ionics. Six of the seven testbeds were physically commissioned in NQCC-managed halls at Harwell, while QuEra established a dedicated UK operating subsidiary and facility co-located on the campus. Hardware teams also demonstrated critical manufacturing and scaling milestones, ranging from Quantum Motion’s 300 mm industrial silicon spin fabrication to Rigetti’s modular 36-qubit Ankaa-class architecture under the HERMES project. Follow-on collaborative grants under the UK Quantum Mission Pilot initiatives have contributed an additional £4.6 million to the participating consortia to advance sub-system scaling, on-chip cryogenic readouts, and real-time decoding pipelines.
The full report and operational data are accessible via the NQCC QCTI Phase 1 Release Portal here and the direct QCTI Phase 1 Technical Report Document here.
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