Despite a 50% Decline in Overall Tech Investments, Quantum Computing Attracted $1.2 Billion from Venture Capitalists in 2023, According to New Research byBCG

BOSTON, July 18, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Three years ago, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) published its forecast for the quantum computing market. Since then, both quantum technology and its classical computing counterpart have progressed in unexpected ways, altering the trajectorythough not the overall directionof this evolving market.

In its updated analysis titled, The Long-Term Forecast for Quantum Computing Still Looks Bright, BCG reaffirms its projection that quantum computing will create $450 billion to $850 billion of economic value globally, sustaining a $90 billion to $170 billion market for hardware and software providers by 2040.

"Is quantum computing on the verge of realizing its transformative potential? The answer, at present, is mixed," said Jean-Francois Bobier, a partner and vice president at BCG and a coauthor of the report. "While there are clear scientific and commercial problems for which quantum solutions will one day far surpass the classical alternative, it has yet to demonstrate this advantage at scale. Nonetheless, the momentum is undeniable."

According to the report, despite a 50% drop in overall tech investments, quantum computing attracted $1.2 billion from venture capitalists in 2023, underscoring continued investor confidence in its future. Governments around the world are also making big investments in the technology, envisioning a future in which quantum computing plays a central role in national security and economic growth. Public sector support is expected to exceed $10 billion over the next three to five years, giving the technology enough runway to scale.

In its 2021 report, BCG expected the market to mature in three phases, and this is still the case. The phases are: noisy intermediate-scale quantum, or NISQ (until 2030), broad quantum advantage (2030-2040), and full-scale fault tolerance (after 2040). Despite maintaining confidence in the projected economic value of quantum computing, BCG's previous assumptions for near-term value creation in the NISQ era have proven to be overly optimistic, however, and have been revised.

The NISQ era has not lived up to BCG's expectations because of two factors: technical hurdles in hardware development are proving tough to overcome and competition from classical computing has been fiercer than expected. AI has exceeded expectations in scientific fields, offering viable alternatives for previously difficult to solve problems. However, by leveraging analog methodologies, quantum machines can still deliver tangible value, especially in materials and chemicals simulations, ranging from $100 million to $500 million a year, during the NISQ era.

Despite being a notable reduction from BCG's 2021 projection, this adjustment is not anticipated to significantly affect the market for hardware and software providers. BCG still predicts a provider market valued between $1 billion and $2 billion by 2030, spurred by three factors:

"Our initial optimism about revenue during the NISQ period was well founded," said Matt Langione, a managing director and partner at BCG and a coauthor of the report. "Revenues for tech providers are approaching $1 billion dollars annually. However, the creation of meaningful value for end users is taking longer. Despite important signs of progress and well-defined roadmaps, quantum computing has yet to experience its ChatGPT moment."

Download the publication here: https://www.bcg.com/publications/2024/long-term-forecast-for-quantum-computing-still-looks-bright

Media Contact:Eric Gregoire +1 617 850 3783 [emailprotected]

About Boston Consulting GroupBoston Consulting Group partners with leaders in business and society to tackle their most important challenges and capture their greatest opportunities. BCG was the pioneer in business strategy when it was founded in 1963. Today, we work closely with clients to embrace a transformational approach aimed at benefiting all stakeholdersempowering organizations to grow, build sustainable competitive advantage, and drive positive societal impact.

Our diverse, global teams bring deep industry and functional expertise and a range of perspectives that question the status quo and spark change. BCG delivers solutions through leading-edge management consulting, technology and design, and corporate and digital ventures. We work in a uniquely collaborative model across the firm and throughout all levels of the client organization, fueled by the goal of helping our clients thrive and enabling them to make the world a better place.

SOURCE Boston Consulting Group (BCG)

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Quantum Computing On Track to Create Up to $850 Billion of Economic Value By 2040 - PR Newswire

In case you missed it, theres a fascinating interview with John Preskill, the prominent Caltech physicist and pioneering quantum computing researcher that was recently posted by CERNs department of experimental physics. You may recall it was Preskill who coined the NISQ label (noisy intermediate scale quantum) in his 2018 paper, Quantum Computing in the NISQ era and beyond, which was based on an earlier keynote talk. That paper is very much still worth reading.

Preskill covers a wide range of quantum (and physics) topics in the CERN interview with Panos Charitos. From his early roots in physics and quantum computing to using QIS (quantum information science) to the emergence of space-time, to the failure to fund and build the Superconducting Super Collider project.

Just to whet your appetite, here are a few soundbites taken from more lengthy responses on the cited topics (and there are many more topics):

Quantum Information Science Impact on Science. In the realm of quantum gravity, quantum error correction has been equally transformative. The most concrete idea we have about quantum gravity is the holographic duality, where a bulk geometry is equivalent to a boundary theory in one less dimension. The relationship between bulk quantum gravity and the non-gravitational boundary theory can be viewed as a kind of quantum error-correcting code.

Quantum Computers Now. Todays quantum computers based on superconducting electrical circuits have up to a few hundred qubits. However, noise remains a significant issue, with error rates only slightly better than 1% per two-qubit gate, making it challenging to utilize all these qubits effectively. Additionally, neutral atom systems held in optical tweezers are advancing rapidly. At Caltech, a group recently built a system with over 6,000 qubits, although its not yet capable of computation. These platforms werent considered competitive five to ten years ago but have advanced swiftly due to theoretical and technological innovations.

Deeper Insight into Physics. While we are gaining new insights into quantum physics, these insights arent necessarily about the foundational aspects of quantum mechanics itself. Instead, they pertain to how quantum mechanics operates in complex systems. This understanding is crucial because it could lead to new technologies and innovative ways of comprehending the world around us. Quantum computers, in particular, will help us broaden our understanding of emergent space-time. They will allow us to explore when and under what conditions emergent space-time can occur, especially in situations where we currently lack the analytical tools to compute whats happening.

A few days after this interview it was announced that the Eight Biennial John Stewart Bell Prize for Research on Fundamental Issues in Quantum Mechanics and Their Applications will be awarded to John Preskill (Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics,California Institute of Technology)at the10th International Conference on Quantum Information and Quantum Control.

Link to CERN EP interview, https://ep-news.web.cern.ch/content/depth-conversation-john-preskill

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Quantum Watchers Terrific Interview with Caltechs John Preskill by CERN - HPCwire

Insider Brief

PRESS RELEASE IQM Quantum Computers, a global leader in building quantum computers, has reached significant milestones in superconducting quantum computing, demonstrating improvements in two key metrics characterising the quality of quantum computer.

A record low error rate for two-qubit operations was achieved by demonstrating a CZ gate between two qubits with (99.91 +- 0.02) % fidelity, which was validated by interleaved randomised benchmarking. Achieving high two-qubit gate fidelity is the most fundamental and hardest to achieve characteristic of a quantum processor, essential for generating entangled states between qubits and executing quantum algorithms.

Furthermore, qubit relaxation time T1 of 0.964 +- 0.092 milliseconds and dephasing time T2 echo of 1.155 +- 0.188 milliseconds was demonstrated on a planar transmon qubit on a silicon chip fabricated inIQMs own fabrication facilities. The coherence times, characterised by the relaxation time T1 and the dephasing time T2 echo, are among the key metrics for assessing the performance of a single qubit, as they indicate how long quantum information can be stored in a physical qubit.

These major results show that IQMs fabrication technology has matured and is ready to support the next generation of IQMs high-performance quantum processors. The results followIQMs recent benchmark announcementsand indicate significant potential for further advancements on gate fidelities essential for fault-tolerant quantum computing and processors with higher qubit counts.

The improvements in the two characteristics, two-qubit gate fidelity and coherence time, allow the quantum computer to be developed for more complex use cases. The significance of these results stems from the fact that only very few organisations have achieved comparable performance numbers before.

The results were achieved through innovations in materials and fabrication technology and required top-notch performance across all components of the quantum computer, including QPU design, control optimisation, and system engineering.

This achievement cements our tech leadership in the industry. Our quantum processor quality is world-class, and these results show that we have a good opportunity of going beyond that,saidDr. Juha Hassel, theVice President of Engineering at IQM Quantum Computers.

Hassel explained that the company is on track with its technology roadmap and is actively exploring potential use cases in machine learning, cybersecurity, route optimisation, quantum sensor simulation, chemistry, and pharmaceutical research.

This announcement comes on the heels of the launch of Germanysfirst hybrid quantum computerat the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Munich, for which IQM led the integration with its 20-qubit quantum processing unit, and the opening of theIQM quantum data centrein Munich.

Link:
IQM Quantum Computers Achieves Technological Milestones With 99.9% 2-Qubit Gate Fidelity And 1 Millisecond Coherence Time - The Quantum Insider

AUSTIN, Texas For decades, scientists have been studying a group of unusual materials called multiferroics that could be useful for a range of applications including computer memory, chemical sensors and quantum computers. In a study published in Nature, researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) demonstrated that the layered multiferroic material nickel iodide (NiI2) may be the best candidate yet for devices that are extremely fast and compact.

Multiferroics have a special property called magnetoelectric coupling, which means that you can manipulate magnetic properties of the material with an electric field and vice versa, electric properties with magnetic fields. The researchers found NiI2 has greater magnetoelectric coupling than any known material of its kind, making it a prime candidate for technology advances.

Unveiling these effects at the scale of atomically thin nickel iodide flakes was a formidable challenge, said Frank Gao, a postdoctoral fellow in physics at UT and co-lead author of the paper, but our success presents a significant advancement in the field of multiferroics.

Our discovery paves the way for extremely fast and energy-efficient magnetoelectric devices, including magnetic memories, added graduate student Xinyue Peng, the projects other co-lead author.

Electric and magnetic fields are fundamental for our understanding of the world and for modern technologies. Inside a material, electric charges and atomic magnetic moments may order themselves in such a way that their properties add up, forming an electric polarization or a magnetization. Such materials are known as ferroelectrics or ferromagnets, depending on which of these quantities is in an ordered state.

However, in the exotic materials that are multiferroics, such electric and magnetic orders co-exist. The magnetic and electric orders can be entangled in such a way that a change in one causes a change in the other. This property, known as magnetoelectric coupling, makes these materials attractive candidates for faster, smaller and more efficient devices. For such devices to work effectively, it is important to find materials with particularly strong magnetoelectric coupling, as the research team describes doing with NiI2 in their study.

The researchers accomplished this by exciting the material with ultrashort laser pulses in the femtosecond range (a millionth of a billionth of a second) and then tracking the resulting changes in the materials electric and magnetic orders and magnetoelectric coupling via their impact on specific optical properties.

To understand why the magnetoelectric coupling is so much stronger in NiI2 than in similar materials, the team performed extensive calculations.

Two factors play important roles here, said co-author Emil Vias Bostrm of the MPSD. One of them is the strong coupling between the electrons spin and orbital motion on the iodine atoms thats a relativistic effect known as spin-orbit coupling. The second factor is the particular form of the magnetic order in nickel iodide, known as a spin spiral or spin helix. This ordering is crucial both to initiate the ferroelectric order and for the strength of the magnetoelectric coupling.

Materials like NiI2 with large magnetoelectric coupling have a wide range of potential applications, according to the researchers. These include magnetic computer memory that is compact, energy efficient and can be stored and retrieved much faster than existing memory; interconnects in quantum computing platforms; and chemical sensors that can ensure quality control and drug safety in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

The researchers hope that these groundbreaking insights can be used to identify other materials with similar magnetoelectric properties and that other material engineering techniques could possibly lead to a further enhancement of the magnetoelectric coupling in NiI2.

This work was conceived and supervised by Edoardo Baldini, assistant professor of physics at UT, and Angel Rubio, directoroftheMPSD.

The papers other UT authors are Dong Seob Kim and Xiaoqin Li. Other authors of MPSD are Xinle Cheng and Peizhe Tang. Additional authors are Ravish K. Jain, Deepak Vishnu, Kalaivanan Raju, Raman Sankar and Shang-Fan Lee of Academia Sinica; Michael A. Sentef of the University of Bremen; and Takashi Kurumaji of the California Institute of Technology.

Funding for this research was provided by the Robert A. Welch Foundation, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the European Unions Horizon Europe research and innovation program, the Cluster of Excellence CUI: Advanced Imaging of Matter, Grupos Consolidados, the Max Planck-New York City Center for Non-Equilibrium Quantum Phenomena, the Simons Foundation and the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan.

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Paving the Way to Extremely Fast, Compact Computer Memory - The University of Texas at Austin

Key Takeaways

Since the first quantum computers were built in the late 1990s, the field has made some significant breakthroughs. But nearly 3 decades later, quantum hardware that can be manufactured at scale and applied to real-world computing challenges remains elusive.

One startup hoping to address the problem is Oxford Ionics, which recently unveiled a new quantum chip it says can be produced by a standard semiconductor fabrication plant and doesnt require costly error correction techniques.

One of the central challenges of quantum computing is producing high-quality quantum gates at scale.

Like conventional logic gates that form the smallest component of silicon computer chips, quantum gates are the building blocks of quantum circuits. The main difference is that whereas traditional logic gates process information as binary bits (ones and zeros), quantum gates process information in qubits, which can represent a superposition of multiple non-binary states simultaneously.

The new Oxford Ionics chip has set industry records in both two-qubit gate and single-qubit gate performance.

Significantly, the company managed to achieve the breakthrough without relying on the error correction techniques utilized by many of its peers. Error correction can be used to identify and fix errors created by quantum gates high susceptibility to noise. However, it increases the number of qubits needed for any given computation.

Although qubits capacity to transmit far more information than classical bits is what gives all quantum machines their vast computational power, not all qubits are created equal.

To date, major players including IBM, Google and Intel have all thrown their weight behind quantum chips that rely on the properties of superconductors like niobium and tantalum.

But although the most sophisticated quantum computers built so far have been based on superconducting processors, the extremely low temperatures required for operation and the need for significant error correction make current solutions impractical for mass-market applications.

In contrast, devices made with trapped ion-based logic gates have relatively low error rates and can operate at any temperature. But until now, they have required lasers to control qubits.

With its latest chip, Oxford Ionics has eliminated the need for lasers. Without this requirement, future quantum computers built using the startups trapped ion processors could be far more commercially viable than todays machines.

One of the companys first customers to receive the new processor will be the UKs National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC). In February, the NQCC selected Oxford Ionics as one of 7 startups to be part of a 30 million government-funded program to build new quantum computing hardware at its facility in Oxfordshire.

Commenting on the new chips performance results, NQCC Director Dr Michael Cuthbert, said they mark a pivotal step forward in ion trap quantum computing that validates the scalability of the technology.

The reported one and two qubit gate results outperform other players achievements to date, meaning error correction becomes achievable with minimal overheads, he added.

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Oxford Researchers Reveal Pioneering Chip: 3-Year Quantum Mass Production Possible - CCN.com