Pioneering Quantum-Supercomputing Integration: U.S. Leadership in the Next Computing Era

Commentary by Hideki Tomoshige and Shruti Sharma

Published March 9, 2026

Integrating quantum computers into U.S. world-class supercomputers is now a strategic imperative for U.S. technological leadership in the next era of computing. Hybrid systems will synergize classical and quantum computing and deliver breakthroughs faster in optimization, simulation, and scientific discovery.

While the United States leads in supercomputing and quantum computing, it lags behind Europe and Japan in developing hybrid quantum-supercomputing systems. Increased federal investment in testbeds, open-source software stacks, and workforce development can position the United States to shape and maintain competitiveness in quantum-supercomputing systems and capitalize on quantum breakthroughs when practical quantum advantages emerge.

Strategic Importance of Computational Power

The U.S. government has long leveraged computing power for national security missions, including ballistics and nuclear weapons simulation, signals intelligence, and scientific breakthroughs. The Department of Energy's (DOE) exascale supercomputers generate great research value across government, academia, and industry in fields including weather forecasting, materials design, and drug development.

Computational power remains a critical strategic resource in the twenty-first century. The United States stands at the pinnacle of classical computing power. U.S. exascale supercomputing capabilities available through facilities like Frontier at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Aurora at Argonne National Laboratory, and El Capitan at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory highlight the country's technological leadership.

However, classical computational power faces three challenges:

1. Slowing performance gains from miniaturization (Limitation of Moore's law)
2. Consumption per transistor no longer decreasing with size (End of Dennard scaling)
3. Unsustainable power requirements of current technology systems

These challenges are driving investment in disruptive computational approaches, including quantum-centric supercomputing.

What Are Quantum-Centric Supercomputers?

Quantum-centric supercomputers exploit the strengths of both classical and quantum systems in an integrated workflow. Quantum computers specialize in accelerators rather than stand-alone replacements for classical supercomputers. Classical computers manage data preparation and post-processing analysis, while quantum processors address classically intractable problems, including optimization and quantum simulations.

This hybrid approach aims to expand the range of addressable problems and enhance the precision and efficiency of calculations. When supercomputers are tightly integrated and colocated with quantum devices, classical systems can apply real-time feedback loops, error correction, and noise reduction for quantum computers. This greatly improves result reliability.

This complementary capability gap is leading supercomputer centers around the world to host early-stage quantum computers alongside supercomputers. The centers see no need to wait for utility-scale quantum computers before deploying quantum computers. This quantum hybrid system is a pragmatic near-term path to create value from early quantum computing efforts while building sophisticated quantum systems in the longer-term.

Strategic Considerations for Quantum-Centric Supercomputing

Early efforts to integrate quantum computing and supercomputers are unlocking new human expertise and institutional knowledge. Scientists and engineers are exploring different approaches to integrate quantum and supercomputing, including designing quantum algorithms for hybrid workflows and optimizing resource allocation. The first nations to field these operational systems are securing a first-mover advantage in quantum-centric supercomputing research and workforce expertise. Early deployment of quantum supercomputing systems will also drive demand for quantum hardware vendors. For these reasons, as well as other strategic considerations, the United States should invest in quantum infrastructure and provide financial support to vendors whose technologies align with U.S. national priorities.

Early quantum high-performance computing (HPC) deployment also drives demand for quantum hardware vendors. These efforts possibly serve as a means for governments to provide financial support to vendors whose technologies align with U.S. national priorities.

These and other strategic considerations call for a more detailed review of the current policy and technological landscape of quantum-centric supercomputing.

Global Quantum-Centric Supercomputer Deployment

The United States maintains leadership in the field of classical computing but faces gaps in quantum supercomputer deployment compared to international competitors such as Europe and Japan.

For example, eight European supercomputer centers in Czechia, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg are currently working to deploy on-site quantum computers, which will be tightly integrated with classical supercomputing infrastructure under the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking. To date, six of these eight countries have already signed procurement contracts for these quantum computers, and most have installed them already, while the Netherlands and Luxembourg are still evaluating vendor selections. These procurements ensure a diversity of quantum modalities to avoid lock-in and create both redundancy and comparative learning across different quantum hardware platforms.

Likewise, Japan has taken early steps to integrate quantum computing and supercomputing. For example, in 2023, the Fugaku supercomputer at RIKEN, a national research and development institute, was paired with a quantum computer developed by Fujitsu and RIKEN. Japan is now building a national quantum-supercomputer platform that connects RIKEN's new Quantinuum Ion-Trap quantum computer and IBM's superconducting quantum computer with the Fugaku supercomputer and supercomputers at the University of Tokyo and Osaka University. This has created a distributed quantum-supercomputing infrastructure system across Japan that Japan's premier research institutions are able to access.

Beyond RIKEN, the ABCI-Q supercomputer currently being developed at Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology will be paired with three different quantum computers in 2025: a neutral-atom computer from QuEra, a photonics computer from OptQC, and a superconducting computer from Fujitsu.

Meanwhile, U.S. efforts to develop hybrid quantum-supercomputing systems remain nascent. The DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is emerging as the flagship institution for quantum-supercomputer integration, with a $125 million budget through 2030. In 2025, ORNL announced the installation of two quantum computers: IQM's 20-qubit superconducting quantum computer (scheduled) and Quantum Brilliance's diamond quantum processing units (installed). Nine DOE laboratories are moving forward with efforts to integrate quantum computing and supercomputing, as reflected in Nvidia's recent announcement about the adoption of NVQLink, a high-speed physical architecture that links quantum processors with classical computers.

In 2024, the state of Massachusetts announced a two-year, $16 million matching-fund project with $11 million from QuEra to install and deploy a quantum computer at the Massachusetts Green HPC Center. This initiative is important in that it represents the first significant state-level quantum-centric supercomputer investment.

Nevertheless, U.S. efforts to integrate quantum computing and supercomputing remain limited in scope compared to the coordinated national efforts underway in Europe and Japan, and legislative commitments in the United States have not kept pace with international developments and technological change For example, while the U.S. National Quantum Initiative Act has been essential in building the United States' quantum research foundation, it predates the quantum-supercomputing integration imperative and does not include explicit budget authority for large-scale hybrid deployments.

The Role of Software in Quantum-Supercomputing

Software is another important area of focus for driving U.S. technological leadership in quantum-supercomputing. Without a comprehensive software stack, quantum computers and classical computers cannot operate together efficiently, even if they are physically colocated and connected through high-speed networks. One proposed quantum-centric supercomputer software architecture expands traditional HPC software stacks to address the unique properties of quantum systems. Without a comprehensive software stack, quantum computers and classical computers cannot operate together efficiently, even if they are physically colocated and connected through high-speed networks. A hybrid coordination layer would provide the architecture required to allow different quantum platforms and classical systems-two fundamentally different computing paradigms-to function together in a unified workflow.

The following visualization of a layered architecture of quantum-quantum-centric supercomputer software stack orders from upper layers, closer to the user, to lower layers, closer to the hardware.

Lessons from HPC Software Development

The HPC community's decades of experience in building scalable, flexible, and efficient operating system interfaces reveal several principles for developing comparable interfaces for quantum-supercomputer integration. HPC software typically includes the following features:

• Layered Architecture: HPC software uses layered designs. Developers can modify or improve individual layers without a full system redesign. The same approach should be applied to quantum supercomputer interfaces for updates and system stability.
• Standardization: The HPC community benefits from established standards, such as an operating system interface standard and a programming standard, which allow applications to run across different systems with minimal configuration. The quantum computing community is starting to follow this path, though nascent and fragmented. Standards that the quantum computing community has adopted include OpenQASM (Quantum Assembly Language), which provides a common language for expressing quantum circuits, and Quantum Intermediate Representation, which enables quantum algorithms to be translated between different hardware platforms. Moving too quickly toward rigid standards could lock immature quantum computers into suboptimal designs and reduce the flexibility needed for innovation. Delaying standardization fragments the ecosystem into incompatible approaches. Neither outcome is desirable. The quantum community should collaborate and coordinate tightly and proactively to achieve the right balance.
• Orchestration: Supercomputers orchestrate thousands of processors, GPU accelerators, and storage systems across distributed supercomputing clusters, ensuring correct resource allocation, timely job queuing, and efficient and effective load balancing. The orchestration layer for hybrid systems must manage which tasks run on classical chips, which go to quantum processors, and how their results should be merged meaningfully. For instance, diagnosing and correcting quantum errors requires tasks of high-bandwidth and low-latency communication between quantum processing units and classical CPUs or GPUs.
• Hardware-Software Codesign: Top-performing supercomputers have resulted from close collaboration and harmonization between chip designers, software architects, and application developers-not just better chips or better code. Likewise, the development of quantum-centric supercomputers will require a codesign approach and even tighter feedback loops between hardware and software developers. A codesign approach ensures that hardware constraints are considered from the start and that software optimizes and fully utilizes next-generation quantum devices.

The Promise of Open-Source Software for Quantum-HPC

While quantum-centric supercomputer software stacks are in their early stages, open-source software stacks developed by universities, national labs, and companies are helping to accelerate progress by allowing researchers to experiment, share, and critique ideas, and test algorithms on different systems instead of working in proprietary silos. For example, the Munich Quantum Toolkit, developed by the Technical University of Munich and the Munich Quantum Software Company, has been downloaded free of charge over 2 million times by users in both academia and industry. Other notable examples of open source software include:

• The Open Quantum Toolchain for Operators and Users, developed by Open-Source Quantum Computer Operations from Fujitsu; the University of Osaka; Systems Engineering Consultants Co., Ltd.; and TIS Inc.
• The XACC framework led by ORNL
• The HybridQ platform was developed by the Flatiron Institute

Intermediary organizations like the Unitary Foundation and IEEE Quantum Computing Working Groups connect stakeholders, facilitate standardization discussions, and coordinate development efforts. These connective tissues allow rapid collective learning and faster progress toward mature quantum-classical software stacks.

U.S. Advantages and Strategic Imperatives

The United States has distinctive strengths, including in quantum computing hardware research and development, supercomputing infrastructure, and a robust open-source software culture. These national strengths are without equivalent internationally. In order to leverage distinctive strengths and attract diverse stakeholders, the United States will need to take focused policy action. This commitment to quantum supercomputing will attract global talent and drive innovation.

It remains uncertain when or in what areas quantum computing will have commercial and scientific utility. Quantum computers have not yet demonstrated clear advantages over classical computing systems for real-world applications outside narrow laboratory domains. It could take a decade or more for quantum commercialization to occur.

This technological uncertainty strengthens rather than diminishes the case for investment in quantum-centric supercomputers. The United States should develop integrated systems now and be ready to capitalize immediately when quantum breakthroughs occur, including by promoting the development of open software stacks, encouraging networking among players in the standards community, expanding workforce development that bridges the two computing systemsand, and constructing new quantum-supercomputing research and development infrastructure and making it available to researchers from universities, national laboratories, and industry in the United States.

With appropriate investments, the United States can maintain operational experience and human expertise in quantum-centric supercomputing, regardless of the timing and scope of quantum advantage. This is a hedging strategy: Invest now in the infrastructure and knowledge required to seize future quantum breakthroughs, while strengthening classical supercomputing capability independently.

The United States built its post-World War II research enterprise on federal investment in computing infrastructure, enabling decades of scientific discovery and innovation and creating the foundation for U.S. economic competitiveness and national security advantage. Quantum-centric supercomputing is the next generation of computing infrastructure. The United States should take strategic action to establish quantum-centric supercomputer ecosystems that will benefit from the most pragmatic approach to quantum computing for the next decade and shape the trajectory of quantum innovation for decades.

Hideki Tomoshige is a fellow with the Renewing American Innovation (RAI) Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Shruti Sharma is a program manager and research associate with Renewing American Innovation at CSIS.

The authors would like to thank Sebastian Hassinger, former principal specialist with Amazon Web Services, for his contribution to this article.

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