Benchmarking Initiatives

International initiatives

Quantum Energy Initiative (QEI) (2022)

The Quantum Energy Initiative gathers industry and academia for evaluating the physical resource consumption of quantum technologies. This initiative focuses on the definition of rigorous and scientific protocols for assessing the footprint of quantum technologies. This is an open community with many international partners. This community was created after the publication of a position paper by A. Auffèves [1].

American initiatives

DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI) (2024)

The DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI) is a program aiming to determine if quantum computers can have some utility-scale impact before 2033. The QBI aims to verify and validate the different quantum approaches in this frame. This project is the continuation of the Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing (US2QC). This initiative comprises three main stages: the description of a utility-scale quantum computer, the description of an R&D plan to develop such a quantum computer, and a final stage of verification and validation. Twenty international quantum computing companies have been selected to enter the first stage of the project.

Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) (United-States) (2019)

The Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) was created with the support of the National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST). This consortium is dedicated to the growth of quantum technologies. The QED-C possesses many US-based and international partners, from both academia and industry. The QED-C is composed of several technical committees, with one specialized in Standards and Performance Metrics. In particular, the QED-C developed a benchmarking suite library for application-oriented benchmarks presented in a white paper of T. Lubinski et al. [2].

Unitary Fund Metriq (2022)

Metriq is a free collaborative platform aiming to gather benchmarking results issued from scientific papers and news. It is supported by the Unitary Fund, a foundation that provides microgrants to help the development of the quantum technology ecosystem.

European initiatives

European Photonic Quantum Computer (EPIQUE) (2024)

The Quantum EPIQUE research project was launched and funded by the European Union. This project gathers 18 partners across 12 countries. One axis of this project is to benchmark near-term algorithms adapted to photonic platforms.

BenchQC project (Germany) (2025)

BenchQC is a research project funded by the state of Bavaria (Germany) aiming to unite key players (industrial and institutions) within the Munich Quantum Valley. This project promotes application-centric benchmarking methods to identify real-world applications solved with a quantum computer in comparison with classical computers. The initiative is prensented in details in the paper of F. Geissler et al. [3]. The BenchQC consortium gathers six german partners (public and academia).

BACQ project (France) (2022)

The BACQ project is supported by the French national program MetriQs-France and aims to define an application-oriented benchmark (physics simulations, optimization, linear system solving, and prime factorization). The methodology is based on a multi-criteria analysis that permits building a global performance figure of merit based on several underlying scores assessed on the quantum computer. The BACQ project is presented in detail in the paper of F. Barbaresco et al. [4]. The BACQ consortium gathers six french partners (public and academia).

CUCO project (Spain) (2022)

The CUCO project aims to facilitate access to quantum computers via public and private partnerships in Spain. The project features different work packages, with some focusing on identifying use cases that could benefit from using quantum computers. This consortium gathers six private companies and five research centers.

EuroQHPC-integration project (Europe) (2023)

This project is part of the EuroHPC JU. It gathers six consortia across Europe to integrate quantum technologies with supercomputers. This project aims to define common standards and develop common application benchmarks. This project gathers EuroQCS France, Euro-Q-Exa, EuroQCS Italy, Lumi-Q, EuroQCS Poland, and EuroQCS Spain. Under the framework of this project, EuroQCS-Poland developed an application performance benchmark called Open QBench.

References

1. [1]A. Auffèves, “Quantum Technologies Need a Quantum Energy Initiative,” PRX Quantum, vol. 3, no. 2, Jun. 2022, doi: 10.1103/prxquantum.3.020101. [Online]. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PRXQuantum.3.020101
2. [2]T. Lubinski et al., “Application-oriented performance benchmarks for quantum computing,” IEEE Transactions on Quantum Engineering, vol. 4, pp. 1–32, 2023.
3. [3]F. Geissler et al., “BenchQC–Scalable and modular benchmarking of industrial quantum computing applications,” arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.11204, 2025.
4. [4]F. Barbaresco et al., “BACQ–Application-oriented Benchmarks for Quantum Computing,” arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.12205, 2024.