Category: quantum computing

By Frederic Lardinois

D-Wave made a name for itself with its early annealing quantum computers and even though the company recently announced its efforts to also build a superconducting gate-model quantum computer, it’s not abandoning its quantum annealing technology. Case in point: The company today made the first prototype of its next-gen Advantage2 annealing quantum computer available in its cloud. This is not the full system, which will feature 7,000 qubits when it launches in 2023 or 2024, but a small 500+ qubit version that is meant to showcase the company’s new qubit design and its Zephyr topology (PDF) with 20-way inter-qubit connectivity.

“The Advantage2 prototype is designed to share what we’re learning and gain feedback from the community as we continue to build towards the full Advantage2 system,” said Emile Hoskinson, director, Quantum Annealing Products, D-Wave. “Our current Advantage quantum computer was completely re-engineered from the ground up. With Advantage2, we’re pushing that envelope again — demonstrating that connectivity and reduction in noise will be a delivery vehicle for even greater performance once the full system is available. The Advantage2 prototype is an opportunity for us to share our excitement and give a sneak peek into the future for customers bringing quantum into their applications.”

Continue reading… “D-WAVE LAUNCHES A FIRST PROTOTYPE OF ITS NEXT-GEN ANNEALING QUANTUM COMPUTER”

Photograph of IonQ Forte (front left) in our quantum data center in College Park, MD.

Introducing IonQ Forte

Today, the IonQ team is proud to unveil our next generation quantum computer – IonQ Forte. This latest generation quantum computer (Figure 1) represents a leap forward in flexibility, precision and performance. IonQ Forte uses ytterbium ions, and integrates highly specialized acousto-optic deflectors (AODs) to direct laser beams at individual qubits in the ion chain to apply logic gates among the qubits. This approach provides unprecedented precision and stability to the laser beams contributing to both higher fidelity and reliability by minimizing noise and unintended residual light on neighboring qubits.

Compared to our previous systems, IonQ Forte decouples the qubit arrangement in space from a fixed optical addressing system, leading to higher performance, the support of more qubits, and more software-driven flexibility. In fact, our goal is to deliver quantum computers whose architecture is fully controlled through software, from the number of qubits to the entangling gates, connectivity between qubits, error correction and ultimately the entire system performance as measured by the Algorithmic Qubit (#AQ) metric.

IonQ Forte, designed with a capacity of up to 32 qubits like IonQ Aria and further expandable in software, represents a major step in that direction. Once fully characterized (tested and measured), we expect that it will demonstrate superior #AQ results and allow customers to run deeper quantum circuits than ever before. We anticipate that IonQ Forte will be made broadly available in early 2023, with earlier access expected to be provided to select developers, partners, and researchers in 2022 to work alongside IonQ’s scientists in evaluating the full potential of this powerful quantum system.

In this blog post, we will bring you into our development process for IonQ Forte, share our thinking, early results and plans for the future.

Continue reading… “Unveiling IonQ Forte: The First Software-Configurable Quantum Computer”

By Esther Shein 

With a combination of intelligent software, connected architectures and new modular and networked processors, the company is aiming to reach near-term quantum advantage. 

IBM on Tuesday announced it will expand its roadmap for achieving large-scale, practical quantum computing with new modular architectures and networking. This will give IBM’s quantum systems up to hundreds of thousands of qubits, the company said during its annual Think conference.

To enable qubits with the speed and quality necessary for practical quantum computing, they will be orchestrated by what the company characterized as “an increasingly intelligent software layer to efficiently distribute workloads and abstract away infrastructure challenges.”

According to IBM, achieving practical quantum computing will depend upon three pillars: Robust and scalable quantum hardware, cutting-edge quantum software to orchestrate and enable accessible and powerful quantum programs, and a broad global ecosystem of quantum-ready organizations and communities.

The company first announced its quantum roadmap in 2020, starting with “Eagle,” a 127-qubit processor with quantum circuits that cannot be reliably simulated exactly on a classical computer, and whose architecture laid the groundwork for processors with more qubits.

Continue reading… “IBM announces plans to deliver 4,000+ qubit system”

Everyone is talking about quantum computers. With the help of high interconnection of as many qubits as possible, huge amounts of data are to be processed more easily, quickly and securely in the future.

By Kiera Sowery

In the PhoQuant project, a consortium led by the quantum startup Q.ANT is researching photonic quantum computer chips – made in Germany – which can also be operated at room temperature. One of the 14 consortium partners is the Dresden-based Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS.

In the project “PhoQuant” many years of experience in cutting-edge research and business come together to bring quantum technology to industry. Many quantum computers still operate at extremely low temperatures close to absolute zero (- 273.15 °C). Cooling requirements are correspondingly high, and direct on-chip coupling with classical computer architectures is not possible. In order to ensure a symbiosis of quantum computer chips and conventional mainframe computers, the new photonic chip process is being applied in the “PhoQuant” research project.

Continue reading… “Photonic quantum computer made in Germany”

The researchers’ model can complete in half an hour what would take a regular PC longer than a human lifetime.

By Stacy Elliott

The Bank of Canada has become the first G7 country to turn to quantum computing to simulate scenarios where cryptocurrency and fiat currency can coexist.

This week, Multiverse Computing, the startup leading Canada’s research, hit a milestone: Its model can evaluate more than 1 octillion possible scenarios in 30 minutes. An octillion is a 10 followed by 30 zeros.

That means Multiverse Computing has completed its proof-of-concept, which combines blockchain data from stablecoin Tether (USDT), whose tokens are pegged to the U.S. dollar, and public data from up to 10 major financial institutions. It also consulted with experts from two major Canadian banks to come up with realistic parameters. 

Multiverse Computing chose Tether for its model because the stablecoin, founded in 2014, had endured a variety of market scenarios in its eight years worth of blockchain data.

Most scenarios in the model showed that non-financial institution adoption of the cryptocurrency would be slow, since there was some upfront knowledge and cost associated with converting fiat to a digital asset. It was also able to simulate how banks might respond by reducing wire transfer fees to compete with the very low cost of crypto transactions.

Continue reading… “Bank of Canada Using Quantum Computing to Simulate Crypto Adoption Scenarios”

By California Institute of Technology

Engineers at Caltech have developed an approach for quantum storage.

It could help pave the way for the development of large-scale optical quantum networks.

The new system relies on nuclear spins—the angular momentum of an atom’s nucleus—oscillating collectively as a spin wave.

This collective oscillation effectively chains up several atoms to store information.

The work, which is described in a paper published on February 16 in the journal Nature, utilizes a quantum bit (or qubit) made from an ion of ytterbium (Yb), a rare earth element also used in lasers.

Continue reading… “New quantum storage technique could make quantum networking possible”

ColdQuanta, a leader in cold atom quantum technology, and Classiq, which provides the leading software platform for Quantum Algorithm Design, today announced a partnership to make 100-qubit quantum circuits a reality for companies and researchers that crave quantum computing solutions to their most pressing problems. The partnership combines the power of two industry-leading platforms: ColdQuanta’s cold atom quantum computers and Classiq’s quantum algorithm design software.

Together, this combined solution provides customers the unique ability to create, simulate and execute unique quantum circuits to address a wide range of finance, material science, supply chain and machine learning challenges.

Continue reading… “New Quantum Computing Partnership Makes 100-Qubit Algorithms a Reality”

The new technique paves way for the development of large-scale devices that are more affordable and reliable.

Written by Aimee Chanthadavong

A team of researchers have developed a new silicon construction technique that could potentially improve the affordability and reliability of building quantum computers. 

The new technique — jointly developed by researchers from Australia’s University of Melbourne, University of New South Wales (UNSW) and RMIT, and Germany’s Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf and Leibniz Institute of Surface Engineering — involves precisely embedding single atoms one-by-one in silicon wafers. 

According to the researchers, the technique, which has been published in an Advanced Materials paper, takes advantage of the precision of the atomic microscope, which has a sharp cantilever that “touches” the surface of a chip with a positioning accuracy of just half a nanometre, which is about the same space between atoms in a silicon crystal. 

The researchers described how a tiny hole was drilled in the cantilever, so that when it was showered with phosphorous atoms, one would occasionally drop through the hole and embed in the silicon substrate. 

A key aspect of this was knowing precisely when an atom was embedded in the substrate so the cantilever could move to the next precise position on the array. 

Continue reading… “Researchers develop new method embedding atoms one-by-one to build quantum chip”

According to a survey report, 69% of of global enterprises have already adopted, or plan to adopt, quantum computing in the near term.

By Aaron Raj

• 69% of global enterprises have already adopted or plan to adopt quantum computing
• Germany is the most bullish on achieving a competitive advantage with quantum computing
• Machine learning and data analytics problems are the top use cases for early and more advanced adopters of quantum computing

Quantum computing is finally making its presence felt among companies around the world. Over the last few years, companies have shown interest in quantum computing but often couldn’t make definitive decisions on using the technology, as there was not enough research on its practical applications beyond the theoretical.

Nevertheless, 2021 has been a remarkable year for the quantum computing industry. Not only has there been more research on the potential use cases for the technology, but investments in quantum computing have shot up globally to boot.

While the US and China continue to compete with each other for supremacy in this evolving branch of computing, other countries and organizations around the world have slowly been playing catch up as well. And now, 2022 is expected to be the year whereby companies can start seeing quantum computing breakthroughs that could result in practical uses.

According to the first annual Enterprise Quantum Computing Adoption Reportby Zapata Computing, 69% of global enterprises have already adopted, or plan to adopt quantum computing solutions in the near term. The report, which involved over 300 leaders at large multinational enterprises, also showed that 74% of them agreed that those who fail to adopt quantum computing will fall behind.

Continue reading… “Quantum computing companies to see real-world use cases in 2022”

Rigetti unveils 80-qubit processor quantum computer consisting of two 40-qubit computers, and experiments with ‘third state’ in quantum processors.

By Liam Tung

US quantum computer outfit Rigetti Computing has announced the Aspen-M, an 80-qubit processor quantum computer that consists of two connected 40-qubit chips. 

The Aspen-M, available in a private beta, is the culmination of Rigetti’s particular take on large-scale quantum computers. 

The firm is pursuing multi-chip quantum processors and announced plans earlier this year to offer it to customers through its Quantum Cloud Services platform.

Instead of scaling up a single quantum processor, it’s been linking smaller chips to create a modular processor with a larger number of qubits – the quantum version of bits in classical computers, characterized by 1s and 0s, which can achieve superposition where a bit can be both 1 and 0 or any combination inbetween those states. 

Continue reading… “Quantum computing: Forget about qubits, here come qutrits”