Nov 12 (Reuters) - AMD plans to make an equity investment in quantum computing company PsiQuantum as part of an expanded partnership to develop the infrastructure required for utility-scale quantum computers, the companies said on Thursday.
The deal comes when quantum computing is attracting growing investor interest as companies and governments seek systems capable of solving scientific and commercial problems too complex for conventional computers.
Breakthroughs in the technology have fueled optimism around its application in areas spanning drug discovery to financial modeling and cryptography.
The Commerce Department had in May announced plans to take minority equity stakes in nine quantum computing companies as part of a $2 billion investment under the CHIPS Act, including a $100 million deal with PsiQuantum.
AMD, which makes chips used in data centers and AI systems, and PsiQuantum will co-design computing infrastructure for quantum systems and develop applications that combine quantum computing with high-performance computing and AI. The companies did not disclose the size of AMD's planned equity investment.
Under the partnership, AMD will provide CPUs, GPUs, adaptive computing technology and software, while PsiQuantum will contribute its silicon photonics platform, which integrates traditional computing chip technologies with optical networking technologies that use pulses of light to transmit data.
PsiQuantum's drug research technology is already running on AMD hardware and can produce more accurate results than existing methods, the companies said.
"The combination of PsiQuantum's workflow with AMD's GPU expertise running large-scale simulation has delivered initial breakthrough results in simulation of covalent inhibitors, a class of molecules relevant in drug discovery for oncology."
(Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru and Courtney Rozen in Washington; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)