The silicon spin quantum computer, which stores information based on the rotation of individual electrons, will initially provide eight qubits, the fundamental unit of quantum computation. Diraq has bundled cryogenic cooling and control electronics into a modular rack that draws under 20 kilowatts of power, slightly above the 5–15 kW used by a standard server rack but less than half the power consumption of dense AI server racks.
During the initial phase, Diraq and Equinix will test how the quantum computer interacts with surrounding conventional systems, how it changes network traffic, and how smoothly the two work together to supplement the data centre's existing compute capabilities. The quantum processor, the result of over a decade of research by Diraq and Emergence Quantum, can be swapped for newer designs as the technology scales.
“The data centre is where quantum computing goes mainstream, and that shift starts now,” said Diraq founder and CEO Andrew Dzurak. “The milestone is in the simplicity itself, with Diraq's quantum computers integrating into operational data centres like any other rack. As we scale to millions of qubits, our system is deployable anywhere in the world, right next to the AI systems reshaping the global economy.”
The installation marks Australia's first quantum computer inside a commercial data centre and the first silicon spin quantum computer to run in a shared commercial facility globally. The US government recently invested $53 million (US$38 million) in Diraq and eight other quantum firms as part of a broader push to accelerate the technology's timeline.
After decades of theoretical work, quantum computers are finally becoming a practical reality. Experts once projected workable systems would not arrive until after 2040, but billions of dollars in global R&D spending have shifted that target to 2030 or earlier. Researchers at Microsoft, Google, IBM and Australia's Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre are among those testing quantum components.