Quantum Computers Is World

In a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) the U.S. Army Research Office (ARO) in association with the National Security Agency (NSA) are soliciting proposals to research efficient and practical protocols and techniques that allow Quantum Characterization, Verification, and Validation (QCVV) of larger systems with direct relevance to Fault Tolerant Quantum Computing (FTQC), and to demonstrate these protocols on intermediate-scale systems 10-20 qubits in size. Much of the previous work performed to characterize quantum qubits has been performed using one and two qubit measurements such as the qubit fidelity measurements that we show on our Qubit Quality page. However, as systems get larger with an eye towards building fault tolerant machines the number of measurements to fully characterize a system using these previous approaches would grow exponentially.  It would be helpful to develop ways of evaluating these machines by selectively characterizing only the subset of information relevant...

IBM and the University of Tokyo have announced a partnership to encourage and promote quantum computing research in Japan. This partnership is similar to one they established with Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in Germany last September. Key elements of the program include: IBM will install an IBM Q System One at an IBM facility in Japan. This will be IBM’s first quantum computer installation in Asia and only the second outside of the United States. It will provide students and researchers in Japan with the hands-on opportunity to explore quantum algorithms, applications and software and develop practical applications of quantum computing. IBM and the University of Tokyo will set up a quantum system technology center for development of components and technologies, such as advanced cryogenic and microwave test capabilities, for next generation quantum computers. IBM’s Japan quantum hub which they previously established with Keio University will be expanded to encourage more companies ...

I recently attended the third annual Q2B Conference on December 10-12, 2019 in San Jose, California.  The Q2B conference continues to grow and had about 540 attendees representing many different quantum hardware/software companies, end users, universities, government agencies, and venture capital communities. This number is double the attendance of the first Q2B conference in 2017. This report is not a comprehensive listing of everything that went on at the conference.  There were several sessions that occurred in parallel and I needed to choose which ones to attend.  In addition, there were several sessions that covered topics that were similar to items covered in other conferences, published technical papers or previous Q2B events.  So I will only cover those items that I found new, interesting and relevant.  My apologies in advance to those folks who wanted to know about things that I do not cover here.  However, QC Ware did record videos of all the ...

D-Wave is finishing the year with a pair of announcements. First, it indicated that CEO Vern Brownell will be retiring at the end of the year and that current chief product officer and executive vice president of research and development Alan Baratz will take over as CEO. Baratz joined D-Wave in 2017 and has overseen many of the recent developments including launch of the Leap™ Cloud Service as well as the development of D-Wave’s next-generation Advantage™ quantum system. At this time, we are not expecting any significant changes in D-Wave’s strategy due to this management change. The agreements with NEC will include several areas of activity. NEC will be able to act as an authorized reseller of D-Wave’s Leap cloud service, they will jointly work with D-Wave to provide applications support and development for customers in Japan, and finally, the two companies will jointly develop hybrid services that combine the power of NEC’s supercomputers and other classical systems with D-Wave’s q...

One of the most frequently asked questions about quantum computing relates to how long before a quantum computer can break a public key cryptography code such as RSA-2048. Most of the time, the response is a general answer of “perhaps 10 years or more”. We have tried to analyze this ourselves in an article titled Applying Moore’s Law to Quantum Qubits and estimated this could happen anywhere between the years 2028 and 2041 depending upon how much error correction is required. But in October of 2019 a more structured analysis called the Quantum Threat Timeline was published by the Global Risk Institute in association with Dr. Michele Mosca and Dr. Marco Piani of quantum-safe cybersecurity company evolutionQ that we think deserves more attention. They surveyed a set of 22 thought leaders who are expert in many areas of quantum science and technology who come from both industry and academia and located in four different continents. The survey generated a wealth of data which you c...

If you want to better understand what some of the next developments needed to continue scaling up the size of quantum computers, you should look at the picture below. Cabling in the Google Sycamore Processor (Credit: Google) This design requires the routing of approximately 200 coaxial cables that start at room temperature (300 K degrees) and go down the dilution refrigerator to the qubit chip which operates at about 10 millikelvin.  The mechanical engineering challenges for such a design are quite significant.  In fact, Google mentioned at the recent Q2B conference that the reason the Sycamore is a 53 qubit processor instead of 54 is not due to a bad qubit, but rather the fact that one of the cables is broken! Now imagine trying to extend this design to 1000 qubits.  Besides the physical space challenges involved with routing thousands of wires, there are also the thermal as well as crosstalk/signal integrity issues that would arise. So a discrete cabling approa...

We are now starting to see more and more relationships between established classical computer companies and quantum startups.  Recently we’ve seen Microsoft ink cloud partnerships with IonQ, Honeywell, and QCI; Amazon announce partnerships with Rigetti, IonQ, and D-Wave; and Atos start working with Zapata.  There are good reasons why these classical/quantum relationships are forming and we predict there will be more in the future. One thing that is an important element for success in the computing business is establishing and retaining customer relationships that builds trust so that the vendor and end user work together in solving problems.  Many of the classical computing companies have spent decades doing this and will have a long record of successful program executions and a very large rolodex of key individuals up and down the chain at their multiple customers. But many of the classical computing companies don’t have strong quantum technology because they’ve been...

In a multi-pronged thrust, Amazon through its Amazon Web Services (AWS) division will be entering the quantum business via cloud services, research, and consulting services. The quantum computing cloud service is called Amazon Braket and provide access to quantum computers from D-Wave, IonQ, and Rigetti, with more to be added in the future. It will be a fully managed service that will include Amazon’s own development environment that will interface to these other systems. This could provide end users with the potential ability to use a common front end for programming their problem and then try it out on each of the three quantum computers. In addition, end users will also have access to AWS’s extensive classical computing capability for hybrid classical/quantum algorithms. IonQ is an interesting partner because they also announced a similar arrangement with Microsoft last month. In addition, Amazon is an investor in IonQ through their venture capital group and IonQ’s CEO, Peter ...

With the recent announcements from IBM, Microsoft and Amazon that they will be supporting multiple different hardware vendors and technologies on their platforms, it is getting complicated to know who is partnering with whom. So we have created a table showing Cloud/Hardware partners in a manner similar to our other table which shows Software Partners. The table reflects those partners and offerings that are either in operating now or have been announced. We will update this table when additional public announcements are made. Updated December 2, 2019 Read More

The Unitary Fund was established in 2018 to provide small micro-grants of $2,000 to fund people who wanted to explore open source quantum software projects. Since then it has funded eleven different projects in ten countries resulting in several technical papers being published and has helped to launch one new quantum startup. They have just posted a new article on Medium in which the Unitary Fund announces that it is entering a new phase with funding from IBM, Google X, Microsoft, Rigetti, Xanadu, and Zapata Computing.  The new funding will allow the standard micro-grant size to double to $4,000 and allow the Unitary Fund to support up to 40 new projects.  In addition, the expanded program may allow funding of a broader range of projects and potentially include projects related to quantum hardware, quantum sensors, and other things that are not within the realm of open source quantum software. Also in the announcement, the Unitary Fund announced that it has formed an...