Pasqal Unveils Italy's First 140-Qubit Neutral-Atom Quantum Computer

Q: When will Italy's 140-qubit computer solve its first real-world problem that classical supercomputers cannot?

No one can credibly say yet, and likely not with this 140-qubit machine alone. Italy’s SOL system, inaugurated on June 11, 2026, is a major step because it gives CINECA a production hybrid setup linking Pasqal’s 140-qubit neutral-atom processor to the Leonardo supercomputer. It is expected to open to European users in autumn 2026 and is aimed at optimization, machine learning and quantum chemistry workloads. But neither Italy, CINECA nor Pasqal has announced a date for when SOL will deliver a practical quantum advantage on a real-world problem beyond classical supercomputers. The main reason is technical. A 140-qubit neutral-atom device is still a noisy intermediate-scale quantum system. Experts broadly view machines at this scale as useful for experimentation and hybrid workflows, but not yet reliable enough for clear, practical superiority over top classical systems. The bottlenecks are gate fidelity, error rates, atom loss and the lack of fault tolerance. The closest evidence-based timeline comes from Pasqal’s own roadmap, which points to early fault-tolerant systems in 2028 and “impactful” fault-tolerant quantum computing in 2029. That does not mean SOL itself will hit that milestone, but it suggests that a genuine real-world breakthrough, if it comes from Pasqal’s platform, is more plausibly a late-2020s event than something imminent in 2026. So the honest answer is: not yet known, and probably not before 2028-2029 at the earliest.

3 articles · Updated · Scientific Computing World · Jun 15

SOL, a 140-qubit Pasqal Orion quantum processing unit, has been inaugurated as Italy’s first neutral-atom quantum computer.
Pasqal said the new system is based on its Orion QPU architecture, marking the company’s latest deployment of neutral-atom quantum hardware.
The launch gives Italy its first domestic installation of this quantum-computing approach, expanding the country’s access to emerging high-performance computing technologies.