electronic circuits themselves will also need efficient simulations on quantum computers, which in turn will be important in quantum-aided design for next-generation quantum processors. Here, we implement variational quantum eigensolvers to simulate a Josephson-junction-array quantum circuit, which leads to the discovery of a new type of high-performance qubit, plasonium. We fabricate this new qubit and demonstrate that it exhibits not only long coherence time and high gate fidelity, but also a shrinking physical size and larger anharmonicity than the transmon, which can offer a number of advantages for scaling up multi-qubit devices. Our work opens the way to designing advanced quantum processors using existing quantum computing resources.