for subsurface imaging
Dammam-7Q: Aramco collaborates with NVIDIA on quantum computing
Global October 09, 2025
Operational Excellence
Aramco’s Upstream is embarking on a digital transformation journey aimed at accelerating technological breakthroughs in the quest for energy.
Delivering energy to the world demands extraordinary capabilities, and Aramco, as a leading global energy powerhouse, takes pride in carrying the beacon of technological innovations to help advance the world’s potential.
Aramco’s Upstream is embarking on a digital transformation journey aimed at accelerating technological breakthroughs in the quest for energy.
Inspired by the transformative Dammam 7 story — Saudi Arabia’s first commercial oil well — and its namesake Dammam 7 Supercomputer — Aramco’s most powerful supercomputer — Upstream Digital Center (UDC), the digital arm of Aramco’s Upstream segment, is ushering in a new era with Quantum Computing capabilities.
Using the Dammam 7 Supercomputer accelerated by NVIDIA graphical processing units (GPUs), Aramco has demonstrated one of the largest quantum computing emulators in the region, called Dammam 7Q (DMM7Q), in an ambitious collaborative work with NVIDIA.
Setting the stage for Quantum Computing in Upstream
Quantum computing promises to transform how advanced computing can tackle the most challenging problems facing a host of industries, including energy. Exploring new reserves requires sophisticated computational techniques, where geoscientists must draw on increasing compute power to process peta-scale seismic data and deliver accurate subsurface images.
“Driven by the Upstream Digital Transformation, UDC aims to innovate at the frontier with Quantum Computing, through our collaboration with NVIDIA, delivering groundbreaking innovations to harness the power of the Hybrid Supercomputers of tomorrow,” said Ashraf M Al-Tahini, vice president of Upstream Digital Center.
In recent work with NVIDIA, Aramco has explored the utilization of an algorithm called the quantum Hadamard edge detection, specifically designed to take advantage of tomorrow’s quantum processors to dramatically enhance the details in subsurface images.
Accelerating quantum applications development with NVIDIA
The future of supercomputing is hybrid, where various architectures work simultaneously to expand the algorithms and applications that can be tackled by harnessing the power of advanced computing. Drawing on the success of incorporating GPUs in various workflows, the team is inspired to work on the frontier technology of Quantum Computing.
Yet, developing quantum algorithms can be challenging as it requires a new thinking paradigm, unlike the conventional algorithms currently used in production systems, as stated by Tim Costa, general manager for Quantum at NVIDIA, “Quantum algorithms offer huge promise, but their development and deployment require coordinating the state of art in both quantum and conventional supercomputing.”
To accelerate quantum computing adoption, Aramco innovators are drawing on the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform to run GPU-accelerated emulations of future quantum computing hardware — allowing them to develop and assess quantum algorithms which can be used for geosciences.
Furthermore, CUDA-Q has enabled Aramco to explore how actual quantum algorithms will run on hybrid systems that leverage both conventional processors like CPUs and GPUs, alongside quantum hardware, by simplifying the distribution of computational tasks between these different coprocessors.
Using CUDA-Q, Aramco has been able to emulate up to 30 Qubits per GPU, scaling to more qubits, utilizing multiple GPUs in the Dammam 7 Supercomputer, to detect 3D seismic faults on a full 3D seismic dataset. This outstanding success delivered a pioneering quantum-based algorithm, marking a new frontier for Upstream computing.
“Our work with Aramco shows how transformative applications can be discovered when quantum researchers have the right platform for accessing accelerated computing,” said NVIDIA’s Tim Costa.
This work marks a collaboration between Aramco and NVIDIA to explore the hybrid Quantum-Classical Supercomputers of tomorrow.