Quantinuum (NASDAQ: QNT), Rolls-Royce, Riverlane and EPCC, the UK National Supercomputing Centre at the University of Edinburgh, announced an agreement on July 14 to explore quantum computing applications for industrial workflows, including gas turbine design.

Under the agreement, Quantinuum will provide access to its quantum systems and software environment, Rolls-Royce will contribute industrial design use cases and domain expertise, Riverlane will contribute quantum error correction and algorithmic expertise, and EPCC will contribute supercomputing and hybrid workflow integration expertise.

The multi-year collaboration will focus on whether fault-tolerant quantum computers could work alongside supercomputers to improve complex fluid dynamics simulations, which the partners say require substantial computing resources as models become more detailed.

The partners plan to test computational building blocks for quantum algorithms on Quantinuum's Helios quantum computer and assess how these could scale on planned future systems, including systems referred to as Sol and Apollo.

"The computing demands of simulating complex fluid dynamics are a major challenge in industrial design, and exploring how quantum computing can complement today's supercomputers is an important step toward addressing them," said Dr. Rajeeb Hazra, President and CEO of Quantinuum.

The project builds on prior work between Rolls-Royce, Riverlane and EPCC on algorithmic, error correction and data requirements for fluid dynamic simulations using classical emulators.

The collaboration is described as supporting the UK government's quantum computing mission, which aims to develop quantum computers capable of one trillion error-free operations, referred to as "teraQuOp" systems.