Researchers Achieve Record-Scale Simulation of Quantum Microchip

7,000 GPUs on Perlmutter supercomputer used to model chip in unprecedented detail

Published on Feb. 24, 2026

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Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley have completed one of the most detailed simulations ever performed on a quantum microchip, using over 7,000 NVIDIA GPUs on the Perlmutter supercomputer. The simulation allowed them to evaluate the chip's design and function before physical fabrication, improving reliability and reducing costly iterations.

Why it matters

Simulating quantum chips before they are physically built allows scientists to identify potential design flaws early and improve the hardware needed for advancing quantum technologies. By testing performance in a virtual environment, researchers can refine the complex blend of classical and quantum considerations required for creating functional quantum chips.

The details

The team employed their ARTEMIS exascale modeling platform to simulate and refine a quantum chip developed through a partnership between UC Berkeley's Quantum Nanoelectronics Laboratory and Berkeley Lab's Advanced Quantum Testbed. The simulation captured the structure and function of the multi-layered, 10mm square chip with etchings just 1 micron wide, discretizing it into 11 billion grid cells and running over a million time steps in 7 hours on nearly all of Perlmutter's 7,168 GPUs.

  • The simulation was completed on February 24, 2026.

The players

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)

A U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory that conducts scientific research in various fields, including quantum technologies.

University of California, Berkeley

A public research university located in Berkeley, California, known for its excellence in science and engineering.

Perlmutter

A supercomputer operated by the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a U.S. Department of Energy user facility.

Zhi Jackie Yao

Researcher in the Applied Mathematics and Computational Research (AMCR) Division at Berkeley Lab and part of the Quantum Systems Accelerator (QSA).

Andy Nonaka

Researcher in the AMCR Division at Berkeley Lab and part of the Quantum Systems Accelerator (QSA).

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What they’re saying

“The computational model predicts how design decisions affect electromagnetic wave propagation in the chip, to make sure proper signal coupling occurs and avoid unwanted crosstalk.”

— Andy Nonaka, Researcher, AMCR Division, Berkeley Lab

“I'm not aware of anybody who's ever done physical modeling of microelectronic circuits at full Perlmutter system scale. We were using nearly 7,000 GPUs. We discretized the chip into 11 billion grid cells. We were able to run over a million time steps in seven hours, which allowed us to evaluate three circuit configurations within a single day on Perlmutter. These simulations would not have been possible in this time frame without the full system.”

— Andy Nonaka, Researcher, AMCR Division, Berkeley Lab

“We do full-wave physical-level simulation, meaning that we care about what material you use on the chip, the layout of the chip, how you wire the metal – the niobium or other type of metal wires – how you build the resonators, what's the size, what's the shape, what material you use. We care about those physical details, and we include them in our model.”

— Zhi Jackie Yao, Researcher, AMCR Division, Berkeley Lab

What’s next

The team plans to do more simulations to strengthen their quantitative understanding of the chip's design and see how it functions as part of a larger system, including benchmarking the simulation results against physical experiments once the chip is fabricated.

The takeaway

This unprecedented simulation, made possible by a broad partnership among scientists and engineers, is a critical step forward in accelerating the design and development of quantum hardware. The ability to model quantum chips in such fine detail before fabrication will help unlock new capabilities for researchers and open up new avenues in quantum science.