Category Archives: Quantum Computer
Is Quantum Computing Stock IonQ a Buy? – The Motley Fool
In the rapidly evolving world of technology, artificial intelligence (AI) burst onto the scene as a hot topic in late 2022, and quantum computing may be next. Quantum computers could become a key component of AI's evolution since they have the potential to be far more powerful than today's biggest supercomputers.
Quantum computers will be able to process complex computations so quickly, using techniques unusable by standard computers, that they'd be able to easily crack most cybersecurity protections in use today. This kind of power could make a substantial impact on existing AI technology since AI models must process enormous amounts of data to correctly execute tasks.
One company focused solely on the quantum computing field is IonQ (IONQ -0.48%). It has created a unique technology that uses trapped ions to form its qubits (quantum bits). The company believes its solution will enable it to build practical quantum computers for use in industries such as finance and medicine.
The question for investors is whether IonQ's technology has found success in the market, enabling the company's growth.
IonQ was founded in 2015, and went public in 2021. The young organization's focus on quantum technology enabled rapid revenue growth thanks to the potency of quantum computers. Traditional computers store and process data in binary form -- each bit of information is either represented by a zero or a one.
Quantum computers are in a sense binary as well, but they process data very differently, with qubits. These are made by isolating charged particles or ions that can occupy a quantum superposition of states -- both one and zero and a cloud of values in between -- until they are measured and the solution to the calculation the computer was tasked with is determined.
Beyond that, qubits can be entangled with each other -- their states quantum mechanically connected. These (admittedly hard-for-the-layperson-to-grasp) qualities are expected to allow quantum computers to rapidly handle complex tasks that classical computers cannot.
IonQ generates revenue by selling access to its quantum computers to various organizations, such as research institutes and government agencies. So far, the company's technology is winning customers. In the third quarter, IonQ generated revenue of $6.1 million, a whopping 122% increase from the prior-year period's $2.8 million. That also exceeded its forecast range for revenue of $4.8 million to $5.2 million .
Its success was no fluke. IonQ's revenue over the first three quarters of 2023 was $15.9 million, more than double the $7.3 million it made in the same period of 2022.
Data source: IonQ. YOY = year over year.
Those sales were strong enough for management to raise its 2023 revenue forecast to a minimum of $21.2 million, up from its original forecast of at least $18.4 million.
While its revenue growth was spectacular, its losses have exploded as well. The company booked a net loss of $44.8 million in Q3, compared to the prior-year period's net loss of $24 million. Through the first three quarters of 2023, IonQ's net loss reached $115.9 million, nearly 4 times its net loss of $29.9 million over the same period of 2022.
These rising net losses are understandable. IonQ's biggest expense through those three quarters was the $60.7 million it spent on research and development, a necessary and important cost given that the company is attempting to develop potentially revolutionary new technology. It's also common for young tech companies to run at a loss for years as they build the foundations of their businesses.
And IonQ's efforts have netted some impressive clients, including Fidelity Investments, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and a $25.5 million deal with the U.S. Air Force Research Lab.
The company is battling against more established names in the tech sector, such as IBM, which has built its own quantum computing solutions. IonQ claims it possesses a superior technology because it's been able to scale up the capacity of its quantum computers quickly while maintaining a high level of accuracy.
This isn't an easy feat because qubits must be kept extremely isolated from any external disturbances or they'll break down. Usually, this means keeping qubits inside nested chambers kept at temperatures near absolute zero -- something that IonQ claims it has mastered.
Certainly, its revenue growth to date has been impressive, and that suggests that IonQ's technology is as good as it claims. But because IonQ is such a young company, it could be years before it turns a profit, and the race for leadership in the quantum computing space has just begun.
Consequently, this stock is likely only appropriate for investors with high risk tolerances -- and a lot of patience -- since quantum computing industry experts estimate it could take until 2040 before quantum computers are scalable enough to tackle growing demand. Buying shares of IonQ at this stage is more of a speculative investment.
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Is Quantum Computing Stock IonQ a Buy? - The Motley Fool
Tips on where and when to use a quantum computer – TechHQ
Where and when to use a quantum computer? Its one of the most common questions that experts, such as Kirk Bresniker Chief Architect at Hewlett Packard Labs, get asked by business leaders. Enterprises want to know where in the IT portfolio quantum computers will bring the most significant rewards and when is the right time for firms to invest in solutions.
For decades, quantum computing developers have been promising big things from quantum computers, which is understandable. Quantum computers are costly to develop, and being modest about the technology isnt going to win over investors. However, its important to note that quantum computers arent universal computing devices.
Quantum computing promises transformational gains for solving some problems, but little or none for others, write MIT Sloan School of Management researchers in a paper dubbed The Quantum Tortoise and the Classical Hare submitted to arXiv.
The team, led by Neil Thompson whose career includes appointments at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, Bain and Company, The United Nations, the World Bank, and the Canadian Parliament has come up with a simple framework for understanding which problems quantum computing will accelerate (and which it will not).
Quantum computers open the door to probabilistic computing, with quantum gates adding a twist to each of the qubits in the calculation. As the system evolves, the qubits interact and point to the most likely solution to the problem that theyve been arranged to describe.
Prodding a bit further, if we consider classical machines as mapping business questions onto maths a perspective shared by Scott Buchholz, Global Quantum Lead at Deloitte Consulting, at this years D-Wave Qubits conference then quantum computers give us the chance to use physics instead.
It turns out that some questions are easier to map onto physics than others, and this gets to one of the key considerations in the MIT framework on where and when to use a quantum computer.
Much of the talk on progress in quantum computing surrounds the number of qubits. Systems are notoriously noisy, which adds to the number of physical qubits that are required to facilitate error correction on logical qubits. On top of this, there are multiple ways of engineering the superposition of ones and zeros through the use of superconducting, trapped ion, photonic, or silicon spin qubits.
Each quantum computing developer has its own preferred approach, and as you walk down the path of trying to understand how quantum computing works, the discussion becomes one about the technology. And this is fine. Large companies can engage their R&D teams and have conversations with hardware developers.
However, just as you dont need to understand whats happening inside a CPU to benefit from a laptop, companies can focus their attention on the kinds of problems that quantum computers can help with, rather than getting bogged down with the numbers and types of qubits.
In their decision-making framework, Thompson and his colleagues identify two determinants in understanding when to use a quantum computer the efficiency of the algorithm and the scale of the problem that needs to be solved.
The problem size matters because the benefit of an algorithmic advantage is larger for larger problems, explains the team. This means that if a problem is too small, the classical computer will have already completed the problem by the time the quantum computers algorithmic benefit kicks in.
Quantum computers are often mentioned in terms of being able to tackle problems that are effectively impossible with classical machines. But the researchers want to guide enterprises on other opportunities too, where a quantum economic advantage exists.
Their analysis also considers technology roadmaps so that companies can assess when the window for using a quantum computer could open up for them.
Problems that become exponentially harder to solve as the size of the problem increases are interesting candidates when thinking about alternatives to using classical computing machines. And Thompson and his co-authors Sukwoong Choi and William Moses provide a useful rule of thumb.
If a classical algorithm takes exponential time and there exists a polynomial quantum algorithm, youre likely to get a speedup, they comment when discussing their framework on when to use a quantum computer.
Its worth pointing out that companies dont have to invest in bare metal hardware. For most customers, their first experience of what qubits are capable of will be via the cloud using one of a number of QCaaS providers.
Amazon Braket makes it straightforward for firms to work with different types of quantum computers and circuit simulators. Amazon advertises that Braket comes with one free hour of simulation time per month, lowering the cost barrier to getting started.
QCaaS hardware associated with Bracket includes gate-based superconducting processors from Rigetti and OQC, neutral atom-based quantum processors from QuEra, and IONQs gate-based ion-trap processors.
Microsofts Azure Quantum cloud service is another option for firms. Here, users get access to systems from Quantinuum, QCI, and PASQAL, as well as the quantum computing hardware mentioned above.
And companies can also access quantum computing solutions in the cloud using QCaaS platforms operated by developers such as IBM, Google, and D-Wave.
Theres no shortage of options, and with frameworks to guide enterprises on where and when to use a quantum computer, now is a good time to think about the types of algorithms supporting your operations and whether qubits can provide an economic advantage to the bottom line.
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Tips on where and when to use a quantum computer - TechHQ
Xanadu hardware CTO shares views on why silicon photonics is the … – DIGITIMES
Xanadu's X8 photonic quantum computing chip. Credit: Xanadu
Silicon photonics (SiPh), the manufacturing of integrated photonics on CMOS platform, has been a buzzword in the recent two years, given the technology's promising prospect to deliver a faster, securer and more efficient solution to data centers increasingly burdened by the ever-growing transmission demand of AI. However, the potential of silicon photonics is not confined to the realm of conventional computing and communication.
Xanadu, a quantum computing company founded in 2016 and headquartered in Toronto, Canada, has been building fault-tolerant computers based on silicon photonics chips. Using photons as qubits, Xanadu believes that silicon photonics will be the quickest path to achieve a fault-tolerant quantum computer able to operate at room temperature. Zachary Vernon, Chief Technology Officer of Xanadu responsible for hardware, talked to DIGITIMES Asia about opportunities brought by photonics to the realm of quantum computing, as he visited Taiwan in November to attend the 2023 Asia Pacific Executive Forum hosted by the Global Semiconductor Alliance.
The race to achieve fault tolerance
Currently, there are several types of quantum computers based on different principles, including superconducting qubits, quantum dots, ion traps and photonics. "At the present moment, there is certainly tough competition between all of them, and you see a lot of approaches that are distinguished by what type of hardware they use," remarked Vernon, noting that as these various approaches are still at prototyping phase, different types of quantum computers are suitable for different near-term problems, and all these near-term problems are a bit short of real business applications. Ideally, if all approaches of building a quantum computer turn out successful, they should all be equivalent and able to address the same problems, according to Vernon.
"In order to get to that point, we need to achieve fault tolerance and error correction, and we think photonics will be the first to get there and the fastest to scale," the CTO explained, emphasizing that scaling and performance are both very important to achieve fault tolerance. "You need lots of qubits to encode error correction, but you also need high performance qubits."
Photonics enables one to network different chips with optical fiber in various patterns, obtaining better connectivity than one would usually be able to access in a superconducting approach. As a result of the better connectivity, Vernon indicated, one can access better codes, especially quantum low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes.
"Photonics is really the only approach that can access it, since the other approaches are very constrained in the connectivity between their qubits, whereas photonics can leverage optical fibers to route qubits wherever you want," said Vernon. As the number of qubits - now usually measured in millions - has come to be synonymous with the global quantum race underway, the Xanadu CTO pointed out that photonics will also need millions of qubits to deliver an advantage. Due to Xanadu's ability to use better LDPC, it can access ten to one hundred times more logical qubits than competing approaches.
"We think it's very important for anyone working in the manufacturing of silicon photonics to pay attention to the quantum computing industry," emphasized Vernon, pointing to the two major advantages offered by silicon photonics: scalability and quantum computing at room temperature. "All of our actual computation happens on room-temperature devices."
Photonics will be the fastest path to scale
According to Xanadu's projection, once it reaches fault tolerance and begin to scale up to add hundreds of logical qubits per year, Xanadu alone would require hundreds of thousands of 300mm wafers per year, as a quantum computer is like a data center that literally takes thousands or millions of chips to build. "It's a very significant market opportunity that in a few years will essentially directly compare with silicon photonics wafer volume in the present day," observed Vernon. In the coming years, he said, Xanadu hopes to achieve fault-tolerance and scale up to 1000 error-corrected logical qubits. "That would look like a data center with about 10,000 racks," he said, indicating that the company's main priority now is to develop the hardware needed to deliver a cloud-deployed, fault-tolerant computer.
In the long run, the use of silicon photonics has the potential to deploy quantum computers closer to the edge. "In principle, there's no fundamental reason why a quantum computer that uses photonics can't be inside a consumer device," explained Vernon, "there are certain technologies that need to be developed for that, but fundamentally, that capability is there because they can all work at room temperature in principle." Whether there'll be a utility for that application for that, however, more time is needed to study how that will look.
In terms of immediate engagement with customers, Xanadu's software library for programming quantum computers, PennyLane, is the main product offering of the company. Xanadu partnered with Amazon Web Services in its development, in addition to cooperation with Nvidia. "PennyLane is one of the leading software APIs for developing algorithms for quantum computers," remarked Vernon, "it started out specializing in machine learning applications - quantum machine learning - but a community grew around it to take hold of quite a significant portion of the market for algorithm development." The Xanadu CTO also highlighted the hardware-agnostic characteristic of PennyLane: it's not limited only to photonic quantum computers or our hardware - one can use it on different platforms, and Xanadu has partnered with multiple hardware providers to enable that. In one example, Xanadu cooperated with multiple automakers like Volkswagen that leverage PennyLane to develop quantum algorithms for battery simulation.
The risk of missing out in a global competition
On the eve of an AI revolution, the Xanadu hardware CTO pointed out that a lot of work has been undertaken in quantum machine learning, even though it's still in its early days. "There's a lot of algorithmic development going on, and it does seem that quantum computers will be able to have the ability to address certain machine learning tasks in a very different way," said Vernon. Nevertheless, large scale fault-tolerant quantum computers are still needed before one can fully access the implication. "Once these things have scaled up to very substantial sizes, then it can address conventional machine learning basic operations - such as matrix operations - more efficiently," according to Vernon.
Instead of replacing data centers, Vernon believes that quantum computers will augment them, indicating that quantum computing doesn't address computational problems and applications that are currently being done by edge clusters. "The types of algorithms that quantum computing across all approaches address are completely different, and they are completely inaccessible by ordinary classical computers as a result of the mathematical structure of the problems to be solved," he pointed out, adding that quantum computing development is not something incremental that gains a slight edge over pre-existing technology. "A good example is the most recent cloud-deployed machine that we built, Borealis, which was able to beat the world's most powerful supercomputer - benchmarked against Fugaku - by many orders of magnitude."
Fundamentally, quantum computing tackles a completely different set of problems that can't merely be addressed by scaling up data center. "It opens up application markets that are simply out of reach and will always be out of reach with present day technology," said Vernon.
Given quantum computing's strategic significance, a global race has been underway. Regarding Canada's advantage in it, the Xanadu CTO observed that the country is punching above its weight in the ecosystem, especially in workforce development, and a number of stellar physicists and engineers coming out of Canadian universities were directly hired by Xanadu. When it comes to Taiwan's advantage, Vernon believes that Taiwan is "the Mecca of semiconductor" and therefore will also be a hub of silicon photonics one day, thus playing a critical role in Xanadu's supply chain in the future. He however stressed that the Taiwanese ecosystem has to pay attention to the customization and optimization "that'd be better to happen earlier than later."
For the photonics ecosystems in Taiwan and elsewhere, Vernon believes that silicon nitride and lithium niobates are two emerging platforms that are extremely important, and Xanadu has been working on them for quite some time. With the help of the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei, Xanadu has been building relationships with multiple foundries and OSATs based in Taiwan, especially those that have been involved in manufacturing Xanadu's devices. "We think Taiwan is perfectly positioned to be a dominant supplier, and what's needed right now is process customization and optimization to ensure the compatibility of the silicon photonics processes, both on the fabrication and packaging sides, with the requirements of photonic quantum computing," indicated Vernon.
"There's a risk of missing out on it if it's not active," he warned, noting that the US and Europe have gained a slight edge in photonics quantum computing since they have spent more time and paid more attention to the relevant requirements over the last couple of years. "The time to act is now to make sure Taiwan stays competitive, and there's no better place in the world that has the sorts of existing infrastructure to support this."
Zachary Vernon, CTOHardware at Xanadu.
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Xanadu hardware CTO shares views on why silicon photonics is the ... - DIGITIMES
How Coherent Ising Machines work part4(Artificial Intelligence + … – Medium
Author : Sam Reifenstein, Satoshi Kako, Farad Khoyratee, Timothe Leleu, Yoshihisa Yamamoto
Abstract : We propose a network of open-dissipative quantum oscillators with optical error correction circuits. In the proposed network, the squeezed/anti-squeezed vacuum states of the constituent optical parametric oscillators below the threshold establish quantum correlations through optical mutual coupling, while collective symmetry breaking is induced above the threshold as a decision-making process. This initial search process is followed by a chaotic solution search step facilitated by the optical error correction feedback. As an optical hardware technology, the proposed coherent Ising machine (CIM) has several unique features, such as programmable all-to-all Ising coupling in the optical domain, directional coupling (JijJji) induced chaotic behavior, and low power operation at room temperature. We study the performance of the proposed CIMs and investigate how the performance scales with different problem sizes. The quantum theory of the proposed CIMs can be used as a heuristic algorithm and efficiently implemented on existing digital platforms. This particular algorithm is derived from the truncated Wigner stochastic differential equation. We find that the various CIMs discussed are effective at solving many problem types, however the optimal algorithm is different depending on the instance. We also find that the proposed optical implementations have the potential for low energy consumption when implemented optically on a thin film LiNbO3 platform.
2. Phase-space simulations of feedback coherent Ising machines(arXiv)
Author : Simon Kiesewetter, Peter D Drummond
Abstract : A new technique is demonstrated for carrying out exact positive-P phase-space simulations of the coherent Ising machine quantum computer. By suitable design of the coupling matrix, general hard optimization problems can be solved. Here, computational quantum simulations of a feedback type of photonic parametric network are carried out, which is the implementation of the coherent Ising machine. Results for success rates are obtained using this scalable phase-space algorithm for quantum simulations of quantum feedback devic
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How Coherent Ising Machines work part4(Artificial Intelligence + ... - Medium
Q-STAR: Advocating quantum technology in the business world – Innovation News Network
Q-STAR (Quantum STrategic industry Alliance for Revolution) was established in Japan in September 2021 to create new industries and business opportunities based on quantum technology. Its members come from various business sectors, including startups, small and medium-sized enterprises, large corporations, and academic institutions.
Q-STAR proactively collaborates with organisations in diverse fields globally, transcending industry and corporate boundaries to develop the quantum technology-related business of the future.
We have set five missions to achieve our goal:
We emphasise more on creating business with quantum rather than academically researching quantum technology.
Our focus is not simply on the implementation of quantum technology but on its creation and the creation of a path to a future that includes peripheral industries. We believe that we can promote the social implementation of quantum by broadening the scope of our activities to include quantum-inspired technologies and hybrid environments with existing computer technologies.
Currently, Q-STAR has six subcommittees and eight working groups. Subcommittees are developing use cases, and working groups are giving helpful information to subcommittees. Q-STAR now has 87 members (as of November 2023), many of which are user companies. This is the most important feature of Q-STAR. These user companies proactively participate in the subcommittees with vendor companies to develop use cases.
To date, Q-STAR has discussed over 50 quantum-technology use cases, selected 16 of them to be followed up on as the next step, and made their industry roadmap.
We use the quantum reference architecture model for industrialisation (QRAMI) as a tool for the standardisation of use cases. QRAMI was inspired by RAMI 4.0 as a model for viewing quantum business. It envisions the entire quantum-related domain on the three axes of domain, architecture, and technology, helping to develop quantum use cases. We aim to make it a global tool, a platform for common understanding, not only within Q-STAR but also with other industrial consortiums aroundthe globe.
In this way, putting use cases to practical use is the key to applying quantum technology to society faster. We expect to expand the technology to various industries, such as healthcare, finance, logistics, factories, transportation, etc.
The future we seek is to solve the present issues in society with quantum technology. We are trying to find ways to use quantum technology to solve these problems. Moreover, we aim to lead the world in quantum industry businesses and want to bring quantum technology to the lives of 5-10% of Japanese citizens in the near future.
We consider the following as the main challenges to implementing the technology socially:
Q-STAR emphasises collaboration among sectors such as government, academia, and industry. Recently, Q-STAR member companies, representatives of academia, and national institutes outside the council have been discussing an open software platform that is not dependent on the type of quantum computer. The plan here is to visualise a hierarchy extending from customer issues to various calculation methods, and to build a hypothesis for practical use as a platform.
Moreover, Q-STAR signed an MoU with three other overseas consortiums, such as QED-C (USA), QuIC (Europe), and QIC (Canada), to build a collaborative relationship.
The quantum industry is still in its infant stage of development. As for gate-type quantum computers, it may take years for social implementation to be realised. However, as for ising-type computers (also called annealing-type computers) and quantum-inspired computers, they have already been shifting to the demonstration phase, and cases of their applications are beginning to emerge.
Many technologies can be combined with quantum technology. It is Q-STARs role to take these combined technologies and create business opportunities with them.
Please note, this article will also appear in the sixteenth edition of ourquarterly publication.
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Q-STAR: Advocating quantum technology in the business world - Innovation News Network
Why enterprises and governments should prepare for Q-Day – IT Brief Australia
In today's hyper-connected world, as enterprises and governments accelerate digital transformation to boost the efficiency, sustainability, and safety of their operations, they must also ensure they are leveraging the best available safeguards to protect against digital-era cyberattacks.
Digitalization promises industries vast improvements and efficiencies that are simply too good to pass up, including substantial benefits for mission-critical industries. As these digital evolutions take place, new opportunities for cyberattacks will emerge this is often referred to as an expanded attack surface. For example, as power utilities incorporate new and varied sustainable power sources into their grid and rely more on digital tools for automation, monitoring and management, they, too, increase their attack surface.
Data breaches are often accompanied by heavy fines, ransom payments and even more difficult-to-measure costs, such as loss of consumer trust and impact on brand reputation. When we couple this with the fact that Cybercriminals often target human-critical systems to disrupt our everyday lives such as the mission-critical networks that support power grids and utilities, public safety, healthcare, financial systems, education, transportation, and other societal services, many organizations expect it is not a question of 'if', but 'when' they will be targeted.
In 2022, in the US, the FBI, NSA, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) warned that major US utilities were targeted in state-sponsored hacking attempts. Critical infrastructure sectors such as utilities and transportation are also closely linked to a country's economy, which compounds the impact of these attacks.
Logistics companies, too, are feeling the pressure as they implement more digital initiatives. Earlier this year, international post in the UK was disrupted for days when Royal Mail was targeted by ransomware. Governments and public safety agencies are also at risk and often a prime target for bad actors. Just recently, Japan's agency for defence against cyberattacks was found to be infiltrated, an attack that lasted nine months before the incident was discovered. And just this month, the personal details of UK Police officers in Greater Manchester were hacked in a ransomware attack.
Attacking at Quantum Speed
Today's encryption methods are designed to protect conventional computers, but what happens when attackers have access to more powerful capabilities?
Governments and research organizations are investing in quantum computing to address sustainability, defence, climate change and other societal challenges.
Enterprises are now using it, too. Mercedes Benz is shaping the future of electric vehicles; US banks are running advanced financial computations, and it was used to accelerate the study of COVID treatments. The mining and oil and gas industries can leverage the output of quantum computing studies to more accurately research where to drill successfully, and power utilities can gain a greater understanding of weather patterns and the impact of climate change and storms on their grid performance. Medical researchers are looking to quantum computing to accelerate treatments and drug development for conditions ranging from cancer to Alzheimer's.
The potential to use quantum computing for good appears to be limitless, and progress demands that we leverage its capabilities. However, when bad actors use it to do harm, quantum-speed problem-solving could rapidly become quantum-speed cyberattacks. This will require a cryptographically relevant quantum computer (CRQC), which carries with it the capability and potential to impact economies, disrupt critical research or, worse, endanger lives. Cybercriminals could hijack millions of connected IoT devices to create distributed denial of service (DDoS) botnets that flood IP and optical networks with terabits of data and hundreds of millions of packets per second.
Many experts predict this day could arrive by 2030 or sooner. Another commonly held belief is that bad actors are not waiting for the arrival of a CRQC; they're preparing by harvesting data now and storing it to decrypt it on Q-Day in a mass attack.
Preparing enterprises and governments for Q-Day with a secure, defence-in-depth, quantum-safe networking approach
So, if cyber criminals are preparing, then shouldn't critical industries too? We must prepare critical networks for the threat now. It takes time and careful expert work to upgrade and modernize these networks. In August 2023, the US CISR, NSA, and NIST organizations prepared a brief on Quantum-readiness providing guidance to critical industries and technology vendors.
This will require network modernization, taking a multi-layer approach from optical core to edge and everywhere in between. This makes it possible to expand the scope of quantum-safe protection beyond the optical core to the IP edge and application layer and to encrypt in-flight network data effectively according to the transmission and network infrastructure.
The future is in embedding advanced cybersecurity protection and quantum-safe encryption into zero-trust-driven IP's and optical technologies.
IP/MPLS routing and optical switching networks that meet the highest level of security required for mission-critical public safety communications, power utility grids, transport infrastructure, logistics networks and more will be essential.
This is part of the work we've been doing at Nokia, and our commitment to this demonstrates how we are already contributing to protecting our enterprise and government customers against 'harvest now, decrypt later' attacks and preparing them for the advent of Q-day.
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Why enterprises and governments should prepare for Q-Day - IT Brief Australia
Eric Schmidts think tank urges moonshot chase to keep US ahead – South China Morning Post
The US must pursue strategic technological breakthroughs, such as a working quantum computer by 2028, to stay ahead of rivals like China and ensure its national security.
That is according to a report released on Tuesday by the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP), an organisation funded by former Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt. The document also urges the improvement of computational energy efficiency by a factor of 1,000 or more and the development of commercial-grade superconductor electronics.
The US and China are in a race for technological supremacy that has seen both pour billions of dollars in investment to expand domestic semiconductor manufacturing capabilities and self-sufficiency. With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) promising to transform entire industries and accelerate innovation in microelectronics and computers, Schmidts think tank attempts to set out a national action plan for the US.
The country has a history of rallying resources and pushing technology forward when pressed by a foreign adversary, from the Manhattan Project in World War II to the lunar landing, which came about after Soviet Unions Sputnik launch.
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The SCSP report warned that the US needs to guard against the dangers of Chinas technological rise, which is aided by a vast domestic industry, a deep pool of motivated engineers and an industrial espionage strategy with global reach.
Now 68, Schmidt has leveraged his US$27 billion fortune to build a powerful influence machine in Washington and has been warning about security risks around Chinas development of AI and computing.
US think tank warns Hong Kong over the economic costs of tightening data rules
The report highlighted Chinas plans for a massive buildout of fabrication capabilities for older-technology chips, an issue that has also been flagged by other US industry executives and think tanks.
Currently, there are few restrictions to block or screen these chips, which may contain vulnerabilities and backdoors, from being deployed in critical infrastructure sectors, the report said. Its suggested remedy is for more transparency around components in US systems and where they come from, to be achieved via Congressional or executive action.
One possible action is to require US government and critical-infrastructure suppliers to disclose the country of origin and other information for all hardware components, it said.
Our action plan focuses on solving for US advantage from a national security perspective, Schmidt and SCSP CEO Ylli Bajraktari wrote in the report. This action plan combines bold technology moonshots with organisational changes and policies that would position the United States for durable advantage.
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The moonshot goals are important to ensure the US lead at a time when advanced chips are getting exponentially more expensive and difficult to manufacture as the transistors inside them become tiny enough to be measured by number of atoms.
Among the moonshots listed, the SCSP called for a million-qubit, fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2028. Quantum computers promise to be millions of times faster than the fastest supercomputers of today, capable of breaking current state-of-the-art encryption systems but also promising to produce much more advanced security methods of their own.
While many big companies like Alphabets Google and International Business Machines have developed functional prototypes, those systems are still too small to undertake work capable of having real-world impact. China is also pursuing breakthroughs in this field, especially as the US escalates trade curbs cutting off access to the cutting edge of traditional computing technology and semiconductors.
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Eric Schmidts think tank urges moonshot chase to keep US ahead - South China Morning Post
Nvidia collaborating with Alphabet spinoff on drug discovery tech … – StreetInsider.com
Investing.com -- Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) is working with SandboxAQ, a startup spun off from Google-parent Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) last year, to expand the volume of chemical reactions that companies can simulate in order to help develop new materials for drugs and batteries, according to Bloomberg News.
Citing a statement from SandboxAQ Chairman Eric Schmidt, Bloomberg said that Nvidia's "accelerated computing and quantum platforms" will augment its own artificial intelligence simulation capabilities.
Schmidt added that this will "help enable the creation of new materials and chemical compounds that will transform industries and address some of the worlds biggest challenges," Bloomberg reported.
Along with cybersecurity services, SandboxAQ has said its software can also be employed to aid the development of drugs and materials.
SandboxAQ Chief Executive Officer Jack Hidary told Bloomberg that the company's collaboration with Nvidia -- and the AI chipmaker's powerful A100 and H200 graphics processors -- may yield applications in a range of fields like medicine, financial services and energy.
Earlier this year, Hidary told Reuters that AI chips have become powerful enough to compute some of the quantum algorithms that fuel SandboxAQ's software. The simulation does not currently need quantum computers to work, Hidary said to the news agency.
Quantum computers are powered by processors that are based on quantum physics, or the study of matter and energy on an extremely small scale. An error-free quantum computer, which would be capable of processing information millions of times quicker than even supercomputers, has yet to emerge despite recent investment from both companies and governments.
The report comes a day before Nvidia, which has become a focal point of a surge in enthusiasm over AI, is due to report its latest quarterly results. Shares in the semiconductor group were marginally higher in early U.S. trading on Monday.
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B.C. quantum computer maker Photonic emerges from ‘stealth mode … – The Globe and Mail
Images are unavailable offline.
Founder and chief quantum officer, Stephanie Simmons, poses for a photograph at the Photonic Inc. lab in Coquitlam, B.C.
Tijana Martin/The Globe and Mail
Canadas third entrant in the global race to build a quantum computer has emerged from stealth mode to reveal its technology, while announcing US$140-million ($193-million) in funding and unveiling a partnership with software giant Microsoft Corp.
Vancouver-based Photonic Inc. said Wednesday it plans to build a quantum computer using silicon chips that are networked with light, a relatively new approach that the seven-year-old startup said would enable the creation of marketable machines within five years.
What were bringing to the table is the fact that the network is the computer, Photonic founder and chief quantum officer Stephanie Simmons said in an interview.
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The 120-person company said its collaboration with Microsoft would allow users to access its quantum system through Microsofts Azure cloud computing network. Krysta Svore, Microsofts vice-president of advanced quantum development, said unlike commercial agreements with other quantum computer makers operating on Azure, the Photonic deal is a co-innovation collaboration to promote quantum networking. Microsoft will offer Photonic as a preferred hardware provider for customers doing computational chemistry and material science discovery.
Microsoft MSFT-Q has also backed a US$100-million ($138-million) venture capital financing of Photonic also announced Wednesday alongside British Columbia Investment Management Corp., the British governments National Security Strategic Investment Fund, Inovia Capital, Yaletown Partners and Amadeus Capital Partners. Photonic previously raised US$40-million ($55-million) from investors including veteran technology executive Paul Terry, who became chief executive officer in 2019, and former Microsoft president Don Mattrick.
Inovia partner Shawn Abbott said hed watched the quantum computing space for 20 years before deciding to back Photonic. Ive felt others were too early for the 10-year life of a venture fund they were still science projects. Photonic is the first Ive seen with the potential to scale quickly into a full platform.
Photonics networking model is in keeping with what many in the field regard as a promising direction for scaling up quantum computers to commercial relevancy.
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I think everybody in the industry has realized by now that networking is needed no matter what platform you think about, said Prem Kumar, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.
At stake is the prospect of a new kind of device that can easily outperform conventional computers at certain kinds of calculations. In principle, a quantum computer could break encryption codes used to protect financial information while providing a new form of impenetrable encryption. Quantum systems could also be used to predict the behaviour of molecules and help discover materials and drugs or optimize decision making in dynamic situations, from traffic grids to financial markets.
Quantum computers achieve such feats by replacing a conventional computers bits its 1s and 0s with qubits that have an indeterminate value until they are measured. When qubits are linked together through a phenomenon known as entanglement, these uncertainties can be harnessed to solve in mere seconds calculations that could tie up a regular computer for eons.
While some quantum systems operating today have reached the level of hundreds to more than 1,000 qubits, commercial quantum systems are expected to require millions.
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Developers have explored a range of design options for creating such computers, but all come with technical hurdles. Those based on the physical properties of subatomic particles are easy to disturb, and their systems require extreme cooling to reduce vibrations. Those that use entangled particles of light, or photons, have the problem that light cannot be stored, and that photons can be lost while travelling through a fibre optic network.
Despite the challenges, startups and tech giants alike are in a global race to create a commercial quantum computer. A few companies, including Google and Torontos Xanadu Quantum Technologies, have proven their machines can achieve quantum advantage, by performing certain theoretical operations faster than existing computers. But while such demonstrations are regarded as milestones, they fall well short of the goal of building a practical quantum computer, in part because they lack fault tolerance the need for a quantum system to dedicate the majority of its qubits to correcting errors and providing reliable answers. They also arent close to performing tasks commercial customers would pay for.
Some quantum computing startups including D-Wave Quantum, Inc. of Burnaby, B.C., the first company to commercialize a limited form of quantum computer have tested the public markets, although demand has been limited. D-Wave, which went public last year, generated just US$3.2-million ($4.4-million) in revenue in the first half and racked up US$46.7-million ($64-million) in operating expenses. Its stock trades for pennies a share.
Photonic is the brainchild of Dr. Simmons, who grew up in Kitchener, Ont., and decided at 16 to devote her life to the field after learning of the creation of the Institute of Quantum Computing close by. I said, This has to be it, this must be the next wave, it will be so fun, the 38-year-old said.
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She decided to build her own quantum computer while studying math and physics at the University of Waterloo after learning that the technology was still in its infancy. First she earned a PhD in material science at Oxford University, then studied electrical engineering at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. She moved to B.C. in 2015, believing Vancouver was the best place to recruit talent. She taught physics at Simon Fraser University and founded Photonic in 2016.
Dr. Simmons felt early quantum computer attempts werent working backwards from the long-term solution, which I thought was going to be a horizontally scalable supercomputer.
To achieve scalability, she opted to work with silicon chips, a well-understood material in the computer industry. The chips are cooled to one degree above absolute zero, or -273.15 C colder than deep space but a less demanding threshold than some kinds of quantum computers with qubits that must be kept even colder.
The Photonic systems qubits consist of tiny flaws within the silicon material whose quantum properties can be transmitted and manipulated using light. This opens the possibility of building up a distributed network of chips connected by optical fibres to perform quantum calculations instead of a single, large processor, as other developers have done.
Dr. Simmons said such a system would be able to exploit new approaches to error correction and produce a fault tolerant quantum computer. The bringing together of the networking and computational side of quantum technology has won support from investors in part because it addresses both how to reliably do calculations and how to convey information securely.
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With Stefs architecture you get a 90-per-cent-plus efficiency of transferring the quantum state, Amadeus co-founder Hermann Hauser said. Thats why I think it will become the dominant quantum computing architecture.
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B.C. quantum computer maker Photonic emerges from 'stealth mode ... - The Globe and Mail
Encoding quantum information in states of light – Laser Focus World
It makes for a hefty hardware overhead. And it only works if the fidelity of the physical qubits is good enough, which puts a huge burden on fidelity. So, this is the obstacle: an acute physical problem that error correction alone can at best turn into a massive engineering problem. What to do?
Many physical platforms are currently competing to make quantum computing a reality. Indeed, many different quantum systems can play the role of the qubit, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Think of trapped ions, neutral atoms, superconducting circuits, and even photons. Yes, light itself can be used to encode quantum information.
Optical photons bring together many advantages for quantum computing. They are easily produced and can be routed in optical fibers, propagating over long distances and remaining coherent for long times at room temperature, which means they dont require expensive cryostats. Companies like Xanadu in Canada or Quandela in France have developed promising approaches to photonic quantum computing. All in all, its a great platform for scaling, but its much harder to run operations between qubits and program the quantum computer. This makes it more difficult to build all the necessary gate operations to achieve universality.
But it isnt the only way optics can provide a key tool in the operation of a quantum computer. Other platforms rely heavily on optics to control and measure quantum systems. Lasers are used to read out the states of trapped ions, optical tweezers to manipulate the states of neutral atoms, and microwave photons to control superconducting circuits.
There are even state-of-the-art approaches to quantum computing where ideas from quantum optics provide more than just a tooland provide a method that directly addresses the biggest problem in quantum information.
The idea here is to attack the error problem head on: Schrdinger cat states are quantum superpositions of two coherent states of light that are effectively mirror images of one another.
The quantum logical 0 is a collective state of photons in which they all share the same amplitude and phase. It corresponds to the state of light created by a laser. The logical 1 is the same state except that the phase of each photon is the opposite. We take the same laser light as we did before, but delay it just as much as needed so that all photons have the opposite phase of the ones in our first beam.
Such states are often referred to as classical because they correspond to the usual excitations of resonators: using mirrors to trap the light of a laser in an optical cavity, the corresponding coherent state inside is described mathematically in the same way as a mass oscillating at the end of a spring.
The laws of quantum mechanics allow us to prepare not only these two distinct coherent states, but also superpositions of them. In the laser analogy, this would correspond to the laser emitting the same photons with two different phases at the same time. These states are called Schrdinger cat states, named after the famous thought experiment in which a cat could be both dead and alive due to quantum effects. Schrdingers aim was to show how absurd it would be if the principle of quantum superposition could be transposed to our classical world.
In the present case, no cats are harmed, but the idea is the same: we can generate and observe coherent quantum superpositions of classical states, not of cats, but of light. And the idea and first realization of these states originated in optics. Cat states of photons at microwave frequencies were then realized and French Physicist Serge Haroche was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2012 for this groundbreaking work in quantum optics.
Whats the connection with the error problem? At Alice & Bob, we use superconducting circuits to generate, stabilize, and control qubits based on Schrdinger cat states (see Fig. 2). Cat states are interesting quantum objects that can teach us a lot about the fundamentals of quantum mechanics, but our goal is to create practical quantum computers. And it turns out cat qubits have one particular property that makes them eminently suitable for fault-tolerant quantum computing: a built-in ability to resist bit-flip errors.
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Encoding quantum information in states of light - Laser Focus World