Software engineers get the ball rolling as they wait for quantum computers to arrive, a number of public Salesforce sites leak private data and the first wooden transistor is here.

These top tech news stories and more for Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023. Im your guest host, James Roy.

Weve heard a lot of endless superpowers of quantum computers, be it to revolutionize medical research or solve climate change. Millions are being poured into these machines, hailed as being a million times faster than todays fastest computers. But they are yet to hit the market.

However, quantum startups are getting creative despite lacking these powerful computers.

QC Ware, a software startup initially focused only on software that could run on quantum computers.

But the company now said it needed to change tack to find a solution until the future quantum machines arrive.

Investors are not shying away either, despite the dismal stock performance of publicly-listed quantum computer companies. QC Ware, in fact, raised more than $33 million.

What these startups are doing is nothing short of brilliant;

They are developing a new breed of software inspired by algorithms used in quantum physics which is a branch of science that studies the fundamental building blocks of nature.

These algorithms, once too big for conventional computers, are being put to work thanks to todays powerful artificial intelligence chips.

QC Ware CEO, Matt Johnson said it turned to Nvidias GPUs to figure out how can we get them something that is a big step change in performance and build a bridge to quantum processing in the future.

This week, QC Ware is unveiling a quantum-inspired software platform called Promethium that will simulate chemical molecules to see how they interact with things like protein on a traditional computer using GPUs.

The companys head of quantum chemistry said the software can cut simulation time from hours to minutes for molecules of 100 atoms, and months to hours for molecules of up to 2000 atoms, compared with existing software solutions.

Source: Reuters

According to a report by KrebsOnSecurity, a number of organizations, including banks, healthcare and government agencies are leaking private and sensitive information through their public Salesforce Community websites.

Reportedly, the leaking stems from a misconfiguration in Salesforce Community that allows an unauthenticated user to access records that should only be available after logging in.

Salesforce Community is a widely-used cloud-based software that makes it easy for organizations to create websites.

Customers can access a Salesforce Community website by either logging in or through guest user access, which allows unauthenticated users to view specific content and resources, without logging in.

But sometimes Salesforce administrators also mistakenly grant users access to internal resources which can cause unauthorized access and data leaks.

The state of Vermont, for instance, allowed guest access to sensitive data to at least five separate Salesforce Community websites, including one for a Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program that exposed applicants full name, SIN number, phone number, bank account number and more.

Vermonts Chief Information Security Officer Scott Carbee said, During the pandemic, we were largely standing up tons of applications, and lets just say a lot of them didnt have the full benefit of our dev/ops process. In our case, we didnt have any native Salesforce developers when we had to suddenly stand up all these sites.

But, Carbee also denounced the permissive nature of the platform

On Monday, KrebsOnSecurity notified Washington D.C. city administrators that at least five different public DC Health websites were leaking sensitive information.

Interim CISO, Mike Rupert said the District had hired a third party to investigate and it revealed that the Districts IT systems were not vulnerable to data loss.

But after being presented with a document including the Social Security number of a health professional in D.C. that was downloaded in real-time from the DC Health public Salesforce website, Rupert acknowledged his team had overlooked some configuration settings.

Meanwhile, Salesforce maintains that the data exposures are not the result of a vulnerability inherent to Salesforce but occur when customers access control permissions are misconfigured.

In a written statement, Salesforce said it is actively focused on data security for organizations with guest users, and that it continues to release robust tools and guidance for our customers.

Source: KrebsOnSecurity

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has a new proposed rule to fight the absolute headache that canceling subscriptions can be.

The proposed provision, Click-to-Cancel, seeks to make it as easy to cancel enrollment as it was to sign up.

FTC Chair Lina M. Khan said, Some businesses too often trick consumers into paying for subscriptions they no longer want or didnt sign up for in the first place.The proposal would save consumers time and money, and businesses that continued to use subscription tricks and traps would be subject to stiff penalties.

The new proposal will mandate a simple cancellation mechanism. For instance, if you signed up online, you must be able to cancel on the same website in the same number of steps.

Secondly, the proposal would require sellers to ask customers whether they want to be pitched other offers upon cancellation. Sellers must take no for an answer if thats the case and immediately expedite the cancellation process.

Finally, and that, no doubt would be helpful to many of us, the proposed rule would require sellers to provide an annual reminder to consumers enrolled in subscriptions, before they are automatically renewed.

Source: FTC

Akash Nigam, CEO of avatar technology company Genies revealed to Insider that he is spending $2,400 a month on ChatGPT accounts for all 120 of his employees as part of an experiment to boost productivity.

Nigam says he is already seeing stuff getting done faster.

He said that Genies R&D team, for instance, has used ChatGPT to answer math and coding questions, get advice on how to debug code, and generate scripts for presentations based on outlines. Other employees have used it to generate creative briefs, write legal documents and answer technical questions.

Not everyone is using ChatGPT but he is encouraging everyone to make learning the technology a priority.

Employees who are more productive as a result of using ChatGPT will be up for a raise or a promotion. Others, he says, will fall behind

He also believes that the use of the technology can help his company reduce costs as he will need to hire less employees.

Genies is not the only company diving head first with ChatGPT. Amazon, Microsoft and design firm Pure Fusion Media have also strongly encouraged employees to use AI.

Source: Insider

The link between increased cyberthreats and AI however, remains unclear. Some say it might be overblown.

John Dwyer, head of research at IBM Security X-Force, told Axios, Cybercriminals are often looking for the simplest, quickest schemes to make money, and bringing todays AI into play doesnt fit that bill.

If anything, its cyber defenders who will exploit AI to counter the run-of-the-mill security holes that criminals keep exploiting.

Palo Alto Networks and Mandiant are the big names already playing around ChatGPT and other AI tools to improve their security products.

Michael Sikorski, CTO of Palo Alto Networks threat intelligence team revealed that most of the malicious code spewed by AI tools are repurposed from previous attacks. He adds, maybe they are faster, but they are not new. And its definitely not trained on how to write a zero-day or find or exploit a vulnerability.

Plus, according to Chester Wisniewski, field CTO of applied research at Sophos, most hackers do not double up as data scientists or are not training the AI models themselves. Theyll need to bring make enough money from the malicious AI for it to be worth it.

But, Wisniewski says, the upside is the good guys do have data scientists, and many of us do spend millions of dollars in the cloud on GPUs

However, we still need to be wary. Many cybercriminals are using simple AI tools to get people to respond to phishing emails and scam texts.

And many companies continue to suffer from attacks with already publicly known flaws that companies failed to patch.

Rob Joyce, director of cybersecurity at the National Security Agency, said during the RSA Conference, Ill tell you, buckle up. Next year, if were talking a similar year in review, well have a bunch of examples of where its been used and where its succeeded.

Source: Axios

Swedish researchers have built what they claim is the worlds first wooden transistors.

Its shaped like a T and made from three pieces of balsa wood.

The top of the T served as the transistor channel, with a source at one end and a drain at the other, while the vertical portion of the T used two pieces of balsa with a gap between them to form the transistors gate pieces.

Before you start gathering your tools and your balsa wood, remember that in order to make the wood conductive, the researchers had to expose it to heat and use chemicals to replace the lignin with conductive polymer.

Once filled with the polymer and assembled, the Swedish team achieved conductivity up to 69 Sm-1, and were also able to prove the devices effectiveness as a double-gate organic electrochemical transistor and functional on/off switch.

Previous wooden transistors could only regulate ions transport and would stop functioning once the ion ran out. This one does not work like that and still functions without deteriorating.

But, unfortunately this breakthrough is not going to revolutionize the semiconductor industry. The balsa wood transistor is neither small nor fast. Its so slow its unable to switch off under a second and switching on takes a full five seconds. Not exactly super computing speeds.

But for the researchers, this proves that it is possible to modulate the electrical conductivity of the electroactive wood by applying an external voltage.

Source: The Register

One of our listeners sent in a note about yesterdays story where we reported that Pornhub was pulling out of Utah. Apparently searches for Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) that allow people to disguise their location went off the charts. Probably a coincidence just a lot of folks trying to watch Charles coronation on BritBox. I mean its Utah they wouldnt.

Thanks to Nemanja for that we love your comments, keep it coming.

Thats the top tech news for today. We go to air with a daily newscast five days a week, as well as a special weekend interview with an expert on topics relevant to todays tech news.

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Im your host, James Roy. Have a Wonderful Wednesday!

Original post:
Hashtag Trending May 3- Quantum startups get creative while waiting for quantum computers to arrive; sites built on Salesforce Community leak private...

The thought experiment of Schrdingers Cat goes like this: place a cat, a radioactive atom, and a vial of poison in a box and close the lid. At some point, that atom will decay, triggering a mechanism that breaks the vial of poison and kills the cat. Because you dont know when that atom will decay, at any given moment the vial could be broken or whole and the cat could be alive or dead. Soin a wayuntil you open the box, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time.

Now, obviously, a cat cannot be both alive and dead. A living creature cant exist in two states at once like that. But quantum particles play by different rules than cats, and if youre dealing with a small enough object under special conditions, it really can exist in two states at the same time. Not in a we-dont-know-the-state way like the cat, but in an it-really-is-in-two-states-at-the-same-time way.

This mind-bending ability to be in two states at the same time is called superposition, and its not entirely uncommon in the quantum world. What is uncommon, though, is something of any substantial size being able to maintain a superposition state. And thats exactly what a team of researchers from ETH Zurich managed to achievethe fattest quantum cat to date. The researchers recently published their results in the journal Science.

More From Popular Mechanics

The team didnt quite get to cat size, or cat biology. Of course, in the lab we cant realize such an experiment with an actual cat weighing several kilograms, Yiwen Chu, the lead researcher on the project, said in a press release. But they did hit 16 micrograms. That might not sound like a lot, but considering most quantum cats are the size of a single atoms or molecules, its comparatively substantial.

The experiments contained three components: the cat, a qubit (the quantum equivalent of a bit found in any standard computer), and a material connecting the two. The cat was made from something called an oscillating crystal, which is a crystal that can shift back and forth between two states, changing shape as it goes.

The qubit is where the superposition comes into play. Unlike a standard binary bit that can only be in one state at a timeon or off, 1 or 0a qubit can be in a combination of those two states1 and 0at the same time, achieving superposition. It also produces an electric field.

Finally, a material that generates a separate electric field when the oscillating crystal changes shape connects the cat to the qubit. When the electric field from the connecting material interacts with the qubit, it is able to transfer the superposition 1-and-0-at-the-same-time state back to the cat, placing it in a true state of being alive and dead at the same time. Once the team was able to verify that the cat was in both states at once, and that alive and dead were noticeably different states, they were able to declare success.

The whole point of this experiment, pushing the boundaries of quantum cat size, is to try and understand why it is that we lose the ability to be in two states at once when we hit a certain size. This is interesting because it will allow us to better understand the reason behind the disappearance of quantum effects in the macroscopic world of real cats, Chu said in a news release. The research also has implications for how to make more reliable qubits for future forays into quantum computingones that dont hinge entirely on single atoms or molecules.

Maybe someday well know why real cats dont behave the same way as quantum ones, but until then, it will remain just another mystery of the quantum realm.

Associate News Editor

Jackie is a writer and editor from Pennsylvania. She's especially fond of writing about space and physics, and loves sharing the weird wonders of the universe with anyone who wants to listen. She is supervised in her home office by her two cats.

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Scientists Created the Fattest Schrodinger's Cat Ever - Popular Mechanics

Abu Dhabi, UAE: NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), in partnership with Tamkeen, has concluded the 11th edition of the NYUAD Hackathon for Social Good in the Arab World, which used quantum computing to find innovative solutions to challenges related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The last day of the three-day programming marathon was marked by the signing ceremony of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between NYUAD and the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator Foundation (GESDA). In the presence of Ms. Caroline Trautweiler, Deputy Ambassador of Switzerland to the UAE and Bahrain, the two entities agreed to collaborate towards advancing the role that quantum computing can play in solving the worlds most pressing issues and sustainability challenges, and the importance of quantum computing education for all.

As part of its long-term strategic partnership with NYUAD, GESDA will grant an Open Quantum Institute prize to the top winners, which offers access to mentorship, industry networking opportunities, academic research, and an open invitation to attend the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipation Summit on October 11-13, 2023. Additionally, GESDA announced they will invite the first-place winners to present their project at the GESDA Summit in October in Geneva to diplomats, UN leaders, scientists, and more. Furthermore, they will be connected with quantum investors, business leaders, and scientists who will help further mature their idea and accelerate its real-world implementation..

Smart Current, QatraH, and feeQra were the top three winners of this years Hackathon, respectively. They were among the more than 200 elite students from 24 countries who gathered to develop quantum computing-based applications that further the objectives of the UN SDGs.

NYUAD Affiliated Faculty and Clinical Professor of Computer Science Sana Odeh, who organized the event, commented: We founded the NYUAD International Hackathon for Social Good 11 years ago on our firm belief that technology can aid society. Quantum computing has the potential to transform many fields, but the biggest area where it could help is in solving our greatest challenge: climate change and the need for a more sustainable future. The aim of the hackathon was to direct this powerful technology specifically toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This gave our participating students, who came from all around the world, a real focus for their talents and energy, and I am once again humbled by the results.

This new generation of global talent has used the Hackathon platform to give birth to ideas that can truly have a transformative impact on the future of our society. I thank everyone who participated, along with the mentors and judges who provided valuable counsel, and our partners and sponsors who have all helped make this event a great success.

In first place, team Smart Current used quantum computing to manage energy grids by providing automated real-time powerflow corrections. The winning project focused on utilizing affordable and clean energy to avoid and mitigate blackouts in power grids.

In second place, team QatraH focused on clean water, sanitation, industry innovation, and infrastructure. Team QatraH used quantum computing to design a more precise, environmentally friendly, and robust water distribution network.

In third place, team feeQra, with their project Qure, designed a solution that assists medical professionals detect early signs of malignant tumors in patients using quantum machine learning.

Participants explored quantum computing solutions to a wide range of challenging projects from machine learning and AI to physics (complex simulation problems), chemistry, computer science, healthcare, maths, to online gaming, security, social sciences, and the arts (quantum-generated artwork).

Experts from world-leading institutions, including ETH, MIT, and Stanford, acted as a source of sponsorship and mentorship to the students, sharing their experiences and insights into the world of tech startups and academic research.

Leaders in the quantum computing and SDG fields delivered keynote speeches. Among them were Palestinian-American electrical engineer Loay Elbasyouni, NASA team member and lead engineer for the innovative robotic helicopter (Ingenuity) that landed on Mars in 2021; zge Aydoan, Head UN SDG Lab, Switzerland; Heike Riel, Head of Science & Technology and Lead of IBM Research Quantum Europe; Massamba Thioye, Head of the Global Innovation Hub of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change; Marieke Hood, Executive Director, Impact Translator, GESDA; and Davide Venturelli, Associate Director, Quantum Computing, NASA Ames Research Center Quantum AI Laboratory, NASA/USAR.

Acclaimed composer, multimedia artist, and writer Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky, kicked off the three-day Hackathon with a public performance of NY-based electronic music and hip-hop.

The NYUAD Hackathon for Social Good was supported by top global Quantum Computing experts from both industry and academia, such as The NYUAD Center for Quantum and Topological Systems; Technology Innovation Institute (TII), Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA), ETH Zurich, EPFL, University of Calgarys Institute for Quantum Science and Technology (IQST), the MITs iQuHACK, QWorld, as well as experts from world-class businesses including IBM, qBraid, and NIEW.

-Ends-

About NYU Abu Dhabi

http://www.nyuad.nyu.edu

NYU Abu Dhabi is the first comprehensive liberal arts and research campus in the Middle East to beoperatedabroad by a major American research university. NYU Abu Dhabi has integrated ahighly selectiveprogram with majors in the sciences, engineering, social sciences, arts, and humanities with a world center for advanced research. Its campus enables students to succeed in an increasinglyinterdependentworld and to advance cooperation and progress on humanitys shared challenges. NYU Abu Dhabis high-achieving students have come from some 125 countries and speak over 100 languages. Together, NYU's campuses in New York, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai form the backbone of a unique global university, giving faculty and students opportunities to experience varied learning environments and immersion in other cultures at one or more of thenumerousstudy-abroad sites NYUmaintainson six continents.

About Tamkeen

Tamkeen LLC is an Abu Dhabi company that partners with leading local and international institutions to deliver projects that enrich the emirates social, cultural, and educational landscape in support of its Economic Vision 2030. Tamkeen is New York Universitys partner in the UAE, enabling NYU Abu Dhabis ongoing development. In addition to NYUAD, Tamkeen manages a portfolio of programs, projects, and events, including The FoodTech Challenge, Ideas Abu Dhabi, startAD, and the UAE Healthy Futures Study.

About Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator Foundation (GESDA)

An independent non-profit foundation under Swiss law and a private-public partnership with the Swiss and Geneva authorities, GESDA was created in 2019 to strengthen the impact and innovation capacity of the international community through scientific and diplomatic foresight. For more information, please visit the Foundation's website at http://www.gesda.global.

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NYU Abu Dhabis Hackathon for Social Good sparks innovative solutions - ZAWYA

Oak Ridge National Laboratory Manufacturing Demonstration Facility. (Source: ORNL.)

Producing products quickly, efficiently and at low cost is a focal point for the manufacturing sector. There are a number of technologies that companies are using to achieve those goals including high performance computing (HPC) and supercomputing. The allure of cheap design and production optimization is strong, but a central barrier is the upfront costs of an enterprise owning an HPC or supercomputing machine.

Thats why in 2021, The U.S. Department of Energy began providing companies with HPC access via the High Performance Computing for Energy Innovation program. In addition to providing funding opportunities, the program allows companies to partner with national laboratories that have advanced computing resources up to 100 times more powerful than typical enterprise systems available for private sector use.

HPC and supercomputing technologies could usher in a manufacturing revolution marked by faster product development, improved product quality, reduced costs and increased efficiency.

Ideas sometimes work better in theory than in practice. Being able to visualize how a part or product will behave in the real world prior to the production process can save design teams a lot of headaches.

HPC and supercomputing technologies enable manufacturers to simulate and model products and production processes at a scale that was previously impossible. This allows manufacturers to design better products and optimize manufacturing processes. For example, in the automotive industry, manufacturers use HPC to simulate vehicle crashes and predict the behavior of materials under extreme conditions, which helps in designing safer and more durable vehicles.

A recent example is Tesla building its custom Dojo supercomputer to expand neural net training capacity using video data to advance computer vision technology to make self-driving vehicles safer.

In the aerospace industry, manufacturers use HPC to simulate how certain aircraft components will perform under varying conditions. Such simulations help manufacturers design more fuel efficient and reliable aircraft. For the semiconductor industry, HPC can help optimize performance through design simulation. Even complex systems such as cross-regional transportation networks can benefit from HPC simulation.

Design simulation is a primary area where HPC and supercomputers can help the manufacturing process. However, advanced simulation technologies have other uses during production and post-production.

Once products and systems are up and running, they need to be maintained. Simulation technologies can help pinpoint what maintenance needs to be performed in order to prevent equipment failures, which can be costly.

HPC and supercomputing simulations can help optimize the production process by helping manufacturers identify bottlenecks and efficiencies. For example, in the chemical industry, manufacturers use simulation and modeling technology to optimize the production process for chemicals such as polymers and plastics. This enables them to reduce the amount of raw materials and energy required to produce a given amount of product, resulting in significant cost savings. Similarly, advanced simulation technologies can help manufacturers like automakers simulate the performance of systems such as brakes under stressful, real-world-like conditions to correct any defects or deficiencies that the models identify.

In high-risk factory conditions, advanced simulations can also help train employees on equipment and tasks prior to their doing so in a real production environment. This can help reduce the risk of accidents while also enhancing worker productivity.

Getting products to market as fast as possible is a top concern for manufacturers. HPC and supercomputers can help companies stay ahead of the competition. For example, in the pharmaceutical industry, they can accelerate drug discovery by simulating the behavior of molecules and predicting their effectiveness at targeting diseases. This helps quicken the pace that drugs can move to clinical trials and ultimately enter the market.

Several studies and case studies demonstrate the benefits of using HPC and supercomputers to accelerate product development in manufacturing. A study conducted by the Council on Competitiveness found that the use of HPC and supercomputers in product design and development can reduce product development time and reduce the number of physical prototypes needed.

The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) High Performance Computing for Manufacturing program has funded several projects that demonstrate the benefits of using HPC and supercomputers in manufacturing. The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) has also funded several projects in the same vein.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has made its HPE Cray portfolio available to the enterprise. The new HPE Cray EX and HPE Cray XD supercomputers speed up time-to-insight with massive performance and AI-at-scale benefits, delivered in a smaller data center footprint and at a lower price point. This allows manufacturers and other industries to harness insights, solve problems and innovate faster by delivering energy-efficient supercomputers in a smaller form factor and at a lower cost.

The simulation and modeling power of HPC and supercomputers helps reduce manufacturing costs by enabling the avoidance of errors during prototyping, reducing the time and resources needed for design and development and optimizing the supply chain.

The Council on Competitiveness found that using HPC and supercomputers can reduce design and development costs. By optimizing designs through simulation and modeling, manufacturers can avoid costly mistakes that may arise during physical prototyping and testing.

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is helping manufacturers by developing innovative approaches to using its Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) supercomputer and the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) to allow researchers to examine microstructures to better design new materials and fabrication methods, and leverage multidisciplinary expertise for the development of new bio-based materials. These efforts are geared toward driving economic competitiveness, energy efficiency and productivity.

HPC and supercomputing systems are also being combined with robotics and automation to enhance manufacturing.

The technologies can analyze real-time data from sensors in factory environments so that robots can use the insights to adapt to changing conditions while maintaining accuracy and efficiency. The data analysis can also be used to optimize robotic systems for greater performance and efficiency. HPC and supercomputers can be used for virtual commissioning, allowing manufacturers to test and optimize robotic systems in a virtual environment before they are deployed in the real world. Supercomputers are also used to train and deploy machine learning models that can direct robots and autonomous systems to make more precise movements and decisions without human intervention.

A number of companies are using this approach, including GE, who has developed a software platform called Predix that combines HPC and supercomputers with the Internet of Things (IoT) to optimize the performance of its manufacturing equipment. This has helped to reduce downtime and improve overall efficiency. Siemens is using HPC and supercomputers to develop virtual commissioning tools such as the Tecnomatix Process Simulate Commissioning and Tecnomatix Plant Simulation Commissioning, which enable manufacturers to test and optimize robotic systems in a virtual environment.

The manufacturing sector is poised for a revolution driven by HPC, supercomputers and AI. Part of that will likely involve the advancement of quantum computing, which has applications for the manufacturing sector as well. Because quantum computers make simultaneous calculations versus the sequential calculations of classical machines, they could enable factory robots to move with greater efficiency and precision, driving better throughput for more complicated tasks. Quantum computers could also advance the creation of new materials for use as semiconductors, industrial production catalysts, electronic components, sustainable fuels, pharmaceuticals and consumer products. As these technologies continue to evolve, it is likely that we will see even more advanced and innovative applications in the manufacturing sector.

This story is one in a series underwritten by AMD and produced independently by the editors of engineering.com.Subscribe hereto receive informative infographics, handy fact sheets, technology recommendations and more in AMDs data center insights newsletter.

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Revolutionizing Manufacturing with High-Performance Computing and Supercomputers - ENGINEERING.com

Like when the world transitioned from computer processors to graphics processors, we are currently witnessing another paradigm shift in which quantum computing is emerging from the shell of research and development to the forefront of mainstream technology. A McKinsey report published recently sheds light on the state of quantum technology today.

As per the report, quantum technology start-ups, which include companies in the domain of quantum computing, communications, and sensing, received an investment of $2.35 billion from investors in 2022. This amount exceeded the record for the highest annual level of investment in quantum technology start-ups, set in 2021. Moreover, four of the biggest deals in the 2000s closed in 2022.

However, the report also highlights that more investments are going into established startups than to new companies. Numbers show that only 19 quantum technology startups were founded in 2022 compared with 41 in 2021, bringing the total number of start-ups in the quantum technology ecosystem to 350.

One of the companies that recently raised $24M in Series A funding is Strangeworks. Strangrworks is a software company that provides a cloud-based platform for developers, researchers, and enterprises to access and use advanced computing resources, like quantum simulators and quantum hardware.

William Hurley, Founder & CEO of Strangeworks, identifies two industry trends when it comes to providing scalable quantum solutions. First is the development of hybrid classical-quantum computing systems, which combine the strengths of classical and quantum computing to solve problems more efficiently, which can be useful for tasks such as optimisation problems or machine learning tasks.

The second trend involves the development of software tools and platforms that enable organisations to manage and scale their quantum computing resources efficiently. These tools include schedulers and optimizers for quantum computations, as well as resource and data management tools across multiple quantum computing platforms.

The case for a hybrid classical-quantum computer was also made by Timothy Costa, Director of HPC & Quantum at Nvidia, who told AIM, while todays QPUs are not capable of providing advantage in production applications, GPU supercomputers are time machines allowing researchers to work on future quantum systems that may accelerate critical workloads.

At GTC 2023, Nvidia generated buzz when it announced a new system called the DGX Quantum system, developed in collaboration with Quantum Machines. The system will utilise the newly open-source CUDA Quantum open-source software.

Before you assume that a hybrid system involves mixing bits and qubits, Costa explains that this is not the case. The hybrid system operates by exposing familiar programming models, compilers, and toolchains for each type of accelerator, making it easy for domain scientists to map tasks to the processor (quantum or classical) that is best suited for the job. As a result, work is divided into discrete tasks that can be mapped to the processor of choice.

For quantum computation, domain scientists describe tasks for the processor at a high level, and the compilation toolchain lowers this to a representation that the quantum processor can readily understand and execute, adds Costa.

Apart from the technical challenges that arise when scaling up quantum systems for practical applications, Hurley highlighted the lack of available talent with expertise in both quantum and traditional computing as one of the biggest bottlenecks to quantum adoption. While the McKinsey report provides some cause for celebration, the overall situation remains grim.

The report states that the talent gap narrowed in 2022 compared to 2021, partly due to more academic institutions integrating quantum into their curriculum. According to their analysis, the remaining jobs could be filled by graduates from fields related to quantum technologies, which produce approximately 350,000 masters-level graduates worldwide each year.

There are significant investments in programs related to critical subjects in quantum computing. Despite the industry not experiencing significant growth, thousands of students and engineers are investing in certification courses to upskill themselves in areas related to quantum technology, L Venkata Subramaniam, IBM Quantum India Leader, had told AIM.

The transition to quantum computing is expected to create four central job opportunities: hardware (building quantum computers), middleware (interconnecting hardware and software), research (developing algorithms that can run on todays quantum computers), and data scientists or application developers (coding on top of the application layer).

However, Subramaniam believes that for those interested in hardware, the path is more challenging. According to him, picking up these concepts from online self-learning is difficult, and university courses are limited.

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Raining Quantum Investments, But Talent Still an Issue - Analytics India Magazine