The Vice-Principal Research Portfolio and Centre for Advanced Computing invite the Queen's Community for a presentation exploring how quantum computing could help shape the next era of high-performance computing (HPC).
Abstract
Issues such as data movement, memory bandwidth, and energy efficiency have become dominant bottlenecks, making incremental improvements in raw computational power insufficient. GPUs, while powerful, remain an evolutionary extension of conventional computing paradigms rather than a fundamental departure from them. As scientific challenges continue to grow in complexity and scale, the need for transformative innovation has never been greater.
The post-Moore era calls for new approaches that combine advances in algorithms, hardware, and software. Among the emerging paradigms, quantum computing stands out for its potential to tackle problems that remain beyond the reach of classical systems. Realizing that potential, however, requires tight integration with HPC, enabling hybrid workflows in which quantum devices act as specialized accelerators alongside classical resources.
Through examples of HPC-quantum software stacks and hybrid applications, the presentation examines the challenges of programming, orchestration, and resource management across quantum and classical platforms, and argues that the future of quantum computing is inseparable from HPC, and will depend on the seamless integration of quantum capabilities into the broader scientific computing ecosystem.
About the presenter
Martin Schulz
Martin Schulz is a Full Professor and Chair for Computer Architecture and Parallel Systems at the Technische Universität München (TUM), which he joined in 2017, as well as a member of the board of directors at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre. Prior to that, he held positions at the Center for Applied Scientific Computing (CASC) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Cornell University. He earned his Doctorate in Computer Science in 2001 from TUM and a Master of Science in Computer Science from UIUC.
Martin's research interests include parallel and distributed architectures and applications; performance monitoring, modeling and analysis; memory system optimization; parallel programming paradigms; tool support for parallel programming; power-aware parallel computing; and fault tolerance at the application and system level, as well as quantum computing and quantum computing architectures and programming, with a special focus on HPC and QC integration.
Martin has published over 400 peer-reviewed papers and currently serves as the chair of the MPI Forum, the standardization body for the Message Passing Interface, one of the dominating standard in High-Performance Computing. He was a recipient of the IEEE/ACM Gordon Bell Award in 2006 and an R&D 100 award in 2011.
For questions, please contact research@queensu.ca.