Project

The project Neuromorphic Quantum-Inspired Optimization and Simulation (NEQIOS) has been awarded a prestigious EIC Pathfinder Open Grant. NEQIOS was selected in a highly competitive call in which only around 2% of submitted proposals received funding, underscoring the project’s scientific ambition and breakthrough potential.

In simple terms, NEQIOS aims to build a new class of brain-inspired computers for efficiently solving problems in science and industry that today’s computers struggle with. These problems range from materials discovery and quantum chemistry to logistics, energy systems, and AI-driven optimisation.

Addressing quantum-hard problems without quantum computers

We are targeting computational problems often described as ‘quantum-hard’ but using room-temperature physical computing approaches rather than low-temperature quantum machines

The central vision of NEQIOS is to approximate quantum-level performance using room-temperature hardware, at dramatically lower energy consumption and latency than existing solutions. To achieve this, the project brings together three complementary and emerging hardware paradigms into a single, tightly integrated architecture: analogue in-memory computing, integrated photonic computing, and reconfigurable nonlinear electronic processing.

NEQIOS project

The NEQIOS project has received 3.33 million euros funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under 'Grant Agreement' 101259183 and runs for five years.