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Digital computing has limitations in regards to an important category of calculation called combinatorics, in which the order of data is important to the optimal solution. These complex, iterative calculations can take even the fastest computers a long time to process. Computers and software that are predicated on the assumptions of quantum mechanics have the potential to perform combinatorics and other calculations much faster, and as a result many firms are already exploring the technology, whose known and probable applications already include cybersecurity, bio-engineering, AI, finance, and complex manufacturing.

Quantum technology is approaching the mainstream. Goldman Sachs recently announced that they could introduce quantum algorithms to price financial instruments in as soon as five years. Honeywell anticipates that quantum will form a $1 trillion industry in the decades ahead. But why are firms like Goldman taking this leap especially with commercial quantum computers being possibly years away?

To understand whats going on, its useful to take a step back and examine what exactly it is that computers do.

Lets start with todays digital technology. At its core, the digital computer is an arithmetic machine. It made performing mathematical calculations cheap and its impact on society has been immense. Advances in both hardware and software have made possible the application of all sorts of computing to products and services. Todays cars, dishwashers, and boilers all have some kind of computer embedded in them and thats before we even get to smartphones and the internet. Without computers we would never have reached the moon or put satellites in orbit.

These computers use binary signals (the famous 1s and 0s of code) which are measured in bits or bytes. The more complicated the code, the more processing power required and the longer the processing takes. What this means is that for all their advances from self-driving cars to beating grandmasters at Chess and Go there remain tasks that traditional computing devices struggle with, even when the task is dispersed across millions of machines.

A particular problem they struggle with is a category of calculation called combinatorics. These calculations involve finding an arrangement of items that optimizes some goal. As the number of items grows, the number of possible arrangements grows exponentially. To find the best arrangement, todays digital computers basically have to iterate through each permutation to find an outcome and then identify which does best at achieving the goal. In many cases this can require an enormous number of calculations (think about breaking passwords, for example). The challenge of combinatorics calculations, as well see in a minute, applies in many important fields, from finance to pharmaceuticals. It is also a critical bottleneck in the evolution of AI.

And this is where quantum computers come in. Just as classical computers reduced the cost of arithmetic, quantum presents a similar cost reduction to calculating daunting combinatoric problems.

Quantum computers (and quantum software) are based on a completely different model of how the world works. In classical physics, an object exists in a well-defined state. In the world of quantum mechanics, objects only occur in a well-defined state after we observe them. Prior to our observation, two objects states and how they are related are matters of probability.From a computing perspective, this means that data is recorded and stored in a different way through non-binary qubits of information rather than binary bits, reflecting the multiplicity of states in the quantum world. This multiplicity can enable faster and lower cost calculation for combinatoric arithmetic.

If that sounds mind-bending, its because it is. Even particle physicists struggle to get their minds around quantum mechanics and the many extraordinary properties of the subatomic world it describes, and this is not the place to attempt a full explanation. But what we can say is quantum mechanics does a better job of explaining many aspects of the natural world that classical physics does, and it accommodates nearly all of the theories that classical physics has produced.

Quantum translates, in the world of commercial computing, to machines and software that can, in principle, do many of the things that classical digital computers can and in addition do one big thing classical computers cant: perform combinatorics calculations quickly. As we describe in our paper, Commercial Applications of Quantum Computing, thats going to be a big deal in some important domains. In some cases, the importance of combinatorics is already known to be central to the domain.

As more people turn their attention to the potential of quantum computing, applications beyond quantum simulation and encryption are emerging:

The opportunity for quantum computing to solve large scale combinatorics problems faster and cheaper has encouraged billions of dollars of investment in recent years. The biggest opportunity may be in finding more new applications that benefit from the solutions offered through quantum. As professor and entrepreneur Alan Aspuru-Guzik said, there is a role for imagination, intuition, and adventure. Maybe its not about how many qubits we have; maybe its about how many hackers we have.

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Quantum Computing Is Coming. What Can It Do? - Harvard Business Review

Early in its history, computing was dominated by time-sharing systems. These systems were powerful machines (for their time, at least) that multiple users connected to in order to perform computing tasks. To an extent, quantum computing has repeated this history, with companies like Honeywell, IBM, and Rigetti making their machines available to users via cloud services. Companies pay based on the amount of time they spend executing algorithms on the hardware.

For the most part, time-sharing works out well, saving companies the expenses involved in maintaining the machine and its associated hardware, which often includes a system that chills the processor down to nearly absolute zero. But there are several customerscompanies developing support hardware, academic researchers, etc.for whom access to the actual hardware could be essential.

The fact that companies aren't shipping out processors suggests that the market isn't big enough to make production worthwhile. But a startup from the Netherlands is betting that the size of the market is about to change. On Monday, a company called QuantWare announced that it will start selling quantum processors based on transmons, superconducting loops of wire that form the basis of similar machines used by Google, IBM, and Rigetti.

Transmon-based qubits are popular because they're compatible with the standard fabrication techniques used for more traditional processors; they can also be controlled using microwave-frequency signals. Their big downside is that they operate only at temperatures that require liquid helium and specialized refrigeration hardware. These requirements complicate the hardware needed to exchange signals between the very cold processor and the room-temperature hardware that controls it.

Startup companies like D-Wave and Rigetti have set up their own fabrication facilities, but MatthijsRijlaarsdam, one of QuantWare's founders, told Ars that his company is taking advantage of an association with TU Delft, the host of the Kavli Nanolab. This partnership lets QuantWare do the fabrication without investing in its own facility. Rijlaarsdam said the situation shouldn't be a limiting factor, since he expects that the total market likely won't exceed tens of thousands of processors over the entirety of the next decade. Production volumes don't have to scale dramatically.

The initial processor the company will be shipping contains only five transmon qubits. Although this is well below anything on offer via one of the cloud services, Rijlaarsdam told Ars that the fidelities of each qubit will be 99.9 percent, which should keep the error rate manageable. He argued that, for now, a low qubit count should be sufficient based on the types of customers QuantWare expects to attract.

These customers include universities interested in studying new ways of using the processor and companies that might be interested in developing support hardware needed to turn a chip full of transmons into a functional system. Intel, for example, has been developing transmon hardware control chips that can tolerate the low temperatures required (although the semiconductor giant can also easily make its own transmons as needed).

That last aspectdeveloping a chip around which others could build a platformfeatures heavily in the press release that QuantWare shared with Ars. The announcement makes frequent mention of the Intel 4004, an early general-purpose microprocessor that found a home in a variety of computers.

Rijlaarsdam told Ars that he expects the company to increase its qubit count by two- to four-fold each year for the next few years. That's good progress, but it will still leave the company well behind the roadmap of competitors like IBM for the foreseeable future.

Rijlaarsdam also suggested that quantum computing will reach what he called "an inflection point" before 2025. Once this point is reached, quantum computers will regularly provide answers to problems that can't be practically calculated using classical hardware. Once that point is reached, "the market will be a multibillion-dollar market," Rijlaarsdam told Ars. "It will also grow rapidly, as the availability of large quantum computers will accelerateapplication development."

But if that point is reached before 2025, it will arrive at a time when QuantWare's qubit count is suited for the current market, which he accurately described as "an R&D market." QuantWare's solution to the awkward timing will be to develop quantum processors specialized for specific algorithms, which can presumably be done using fewer qubits. But those won't be aren't available for the company's launch.

Obviously, it's debatable whether there's a large market of companies anxiously awaiting the opportunity to install liquid helium dilution refrigerators in their office/lab/garage. But the reality is that there is almost certainly some market for an off-the-shelf quantum processorat least partly composed of other quantum computing startups.

That's not quite equivalent to the situation that greeted the Intel 4004. But it may be significant in that we seem to be getting close to the point where some of Ars' quantum-computing coverage will need to move out of the science section and over to IT, marking a clear shift in how the field is developing.

Listing image by QuantWare

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Startup hopes the world is ready to buy quantum processors - Ars Technica

In a moment of triumph thats being hailed as equivalent to the move from room-scale silicon technology down to desk-sized machines, quantum computing has now gone chip-scale down from the room-scale contraptions you might have seen elsewhere, including in science fiction.

The development has been spearheaded by Cambridge-based quantum specialist Riverlanes work with New York and London-based digital quantum company Seeqc. Theyre the first to deploy a quantum computing chip that has an integrated operating system for workflow and qubit management (qubits are comparable to classical computings transistors, but capable of pairing between themselves, instantly sharing information via quantum states, and also capable of representing both a 0 and a 1). The last time we achieved this level of miniaturization on a computing technology, we started the computing revolution. Now, expectations for a quantum revolution are on the table as well, and the world will have to adapt to the new reality.

The new chip ushers in scalable quantum computing, and the companies hope to scale the design by increasing surface area and qubit count. The aim is to bring qubits up to millions, a far cry from their current deployed maximum of a (comparatively puny, yet still remarkably complex) 76-qubit system that enabled China to claim quantum supremacy. There are, of course, other ways to scale besides increased qubit counts. Deployment of multiple chips in a single self-contained system or through multiple, inter-connectable systems could provide easier paths to quantum coherency. And on that end, a quantum OS is paramount. Enter Deltaflow.OS.

Deltaflow.OS is a hardware and platform-agnostic OS (think Linux, which populates everything from smartphones to IoT to supercomputers), meaning that it can serve as the control mechanism for various quantum deployment technologies currently being pursued around the globe. And even as multiple independent companies such as Google, Microsoft, and IBM, to name a few pursue the holy grail of quantum supremacy, Riverlanes Deltaflow.OS is an open-source, Github-available OS that's taking the open approach for market penetration.

And this makes sense, since the more than 50 quantum computers already built around the world all operate on independently-developed software. Its such a nascent field still that there are no standards regarding the deployment and control systems. An easily-deployable, quantum hardware-agnostic OS will undoubtedly accelerate development of applications that take advantage of quantum computings strengths, which at the 76 qubit system of China, already enables certain workloads to be crunched millions of times faster than the fastest classical, Turing-type supercomputer could ever hope to achieve.

To achieve this, Riverlane has effectively created a layered Digital Quantum Managament (DQM) SoC (System-On-Chip) that pairs classical computing capabilities with quantum mechanics. The companys diagrams demonstrate what it calls an SFQ (Single Flux Quantum) co-processor as the base layer of the design, which enables the OS to be exposed to developers with a relatively familiar interface for interaction with the qubits. This offers the capability to perform digital qubit control, readout and classical data processing functions, as well as being a platform for error correction.

There are numerous advantages to be taken from this approach, as the SFQs resources are (...) proximally co-located and integrated with qubit chips in a cryo-cooled environment to drastically reduce the complexity of input/output connections and maximize the benefits of fast, precise, low-noise digital control and readout, and energy-efficient classical co-processing. Essentially, some tenets of classical computing still apply, in that the closer the processing parts are, the more performant they are. This enables the OS to run, and is layered next to an active qubit sheet that actually performs the calculations.

Quantum computing has long been the holy grail in development for new processing technologies. However, the complexity of this endeavour cant be understated. The physics for quantum computing are essentially being written as we go, and while that is true, in a way, for many technological and innovation efforts, nowhere does It happen as much as here.

There are multiple questions related to quantum computing and its relationship to classical computing. Thanks to the efforts of Riverlane and Seeqc, the quantum computing ecosystem can now align their needles and collectively problem-solve for deployment and operation of quantum-computing-on-a-chip solutions.

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Quantum Computing on a Chip: Brace for the Revolution - Tom's Hardware

Delft, Netherlands -- July 15, 2021 -- Today Dutch startup QuantWare has launched the worlds first commercially available superconducting processor for quantum computers (QPU). This is the first time superconducting quantum processors have been available off the shelf, a development with the potential to significantly accelerate the quantum computing revolution.

Quantum technology promises to significantly expand the amount of data computers are able to process, which could have huge implications for fields such as A.I., medicine, business intelligence, and cybersecurity. But the quantum industry is still young and scaling is difficult. Companies building parts for quantum computers need qubits, the microscopic objects that make quantum computing possible, but it is often cost prohibitive for them to produce them themselves. QuantWares superconducting QPUs eliminate that barrier and may be instrumental in accelerating the development of the quantum computer market.

Superconducting is the leading and most mature approach to quantum processors - Google achieved quantum supremacy in 2019 using superconducting QPUs. While other QPUs are already available off the shelf, this is the first time a superconducting QPU has been easily available in productised form, leveling the playing field for quantum experimentation.

QuantWares proprietary product, Soprano, is a 5-qubit QPU. In an article published by Ars Technica, QuantWare shared that the fidelities of each qubit will be 99.9 percent, which should keep the error rate manageable. 5 qubits is sufficient for the immediate customer base QuantWare expects to attract, namely research institutions and university labs.

The race towards useful Quantum Computation is heating up, but still reserved to a small group of companies. By making QPUs more available, we will speed up the development of practical quantum-driven solutions to the worlds biggest problems. said QuantWare co-founder Dr. Alessandro Bruno.

Another way to achieve Quantum Advantage is by designing a chip specifically for a particular application. The startup wants to exploit this by making co-designed QPUs together with software companies to allow them to develop processors specialized in their algorithms.

QuantWare was founded in 2020 by quantum engineer Dr. Alessandro Bruno and Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) graduate MSc Matthijs Rijlaarsdam. They met while doing research at QuTech, a quantum technology research institute at TU Delft in the Netherlands. The company recently closed their pre-seed funding round, meaning the company has now raised 1.15M. They plan to quickly expand their team and upgrade their processors towards higher qubit numbers. One of their growth goals for the rest of the year is to expand fabrication capabilities and partnerships - QuantWare hopes to become a collaborative bridge between quantum companies worldwide. The company is already looking for new operational facilities, as they expect to outgrow their current building within months. QuantWares first two products, Crescendo and Soprano, are now available for pre-order.

Investors

About QuantWare

QuantWare builds super-conducting quantum processors and related hardware. The processors lie at the heart of quantum computers and are crucial for conducting research in this field. By providing processors, QuantWare is making quantum research accessible to researchers and startups. The company also develops technology that will increase the computational power of processors beyond current restrictions. QuantWares innovations are creating a new standard for quantum processors.

About UNIIQ

UNIIQ is a 22 million investment fund focused on the proof-of-concept phase, which helps entrepreneurs in West Holland bring their unique innovation to market faster. UNIIQ offers entrepreneurs the seed capital to achieve their plans and bridge the riskiest phase from concept to promising business. A consortium, including Erasmus MC, TU Delft, Leiden University and the regional development agency InnovationQuarter, created the fund. In 2021, Erasmus University Rotterdam also joined the fund. UNIIQ is made possible by the European Union, the Province of South Holland and the municipalities of Rotterdam, The Hague and Leiden. InnovationQuarter is responsible for the fund management.

About FORWARD.one

FORWARD.one is a VC fund focussed on investing in high-tech start-ups and scale-ups. With a team of financial professionals and technology entrepreneurs, FORWARD.one actively supports its portfolio companies to achieve their goals and ambitions. After successfully deploying the first fund in 11 promising start-ups, FORWARD.one has recently launched its second fund with a size of 100m. With this fund FORWARD.one will continue to invest in ambitious high-tech entrepreneurs and their companies.https://www.forward.one/

About Rabobank Startup & Scale-up Team

Start-ups and scale-ups are the innovators of the economy, contributing significantly to solving societal challenges, and are the main engine for economic growth and employment in the Netherlands. This target group therefore represents great commercial and strategic value for Rabobank. The Startup & Scale-up Team helps entrepreneurs who share this mission to grow sustainably by opening up their (international) network, by providing knowledge and funding.

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Quantware Launches the World's First Commercially Available Superconducting Quantum Processors, Accelerating the Advent of the Quantum Computer. -...

image: Dolev Bluvstein (from left), Mikhail Lukin, and Sepehr Ebadi have developed a special type of quantum computer known as a programmable quantum simulator. Evadi is adjusting the devices that make them possible to see More

Credits: Rose Lincoln / Harvard Staff Photographer

A team of physicists at the Harvard MIT Ultra-Cryogenic Atomic Center and other universities have developed a special type of quantum computer known as a programmable quantum simulator that can operate at 256 qubits or qubits.

The system sheds light on the host of complex quantum processes, ultimately helping to bring real-world breakthroughs in materials science, communications technology, finance, and many other areas. It shows a big step towards building. Overcome research hurdles beyond the capabilities of todays fastest supercomputers. Qubits are the basic building blocks of quantum computers and are the source of their enormous processing power.

This moves the field to a new territory that no one has ever been to, said Mikhail Lukin, a professor of physics at George Vasmer Leverett, co-director of the Harvard Quantum Initiative and one of the senior authors of the study. Stated.Published in the journal today Nature.. We are entering a whole new part of the quantum world.

According to Sepehr Ebadi, a physics student at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard and the lead author of the study, the unprecedented combination of size and programmability of the system is at the forefront of the quantum computer competition. The mysterious nature of the substance on a very small scale greatly improves its processing power. Under the right circumstances, increasing the cue bit means that the system can store and process more information exponentially than the traditional bits on which a standard computer runs.

The number of quantum states possible with just 256 qubits exceeds the number of atoms in the solar system, Evadi explained the vast size of the system.

Already, the simulator allows researchers to observe some exotic quantum states that have never been experimentally realized, and is accurate enough to serve as an example in a textbook showing how magnetism works at the quantum level. Quantum phase transition research can be performed.

These experiments provide powerful insights into the quantum physics that underlie material properties and help scientists show how to design new materials with exotic properties.

The project uses a significantly upgraded version of the platform developed by researchers in 2017 that was able to reach a size of 51 qubits. The old system allowed researchers to capture ultra-low temperature rubidium atoms and place them in a particular order using a one-dimensional array of individually focused laser beams called optical tweezers.

This new system allows atoms to be assembled into a two-dimensional array of optical tweezers. This increases the achievable system size from 51 qubits to 256 qubits. Tweezers allow researchers to arrange atoms in a defect-free pattern and create programmable shapes such as squares, honeycombs, or triangular grids to design different interactions between cubits.

The flagship product of this new platform is a device called the Spatial Light Modulator, which is used to form the light wave front and generate hundreds of individually focused optical tweezers beams, Ebadi said. Mr. says. These devices are essentially the same as those used in computer projectors to display images on the screen, but we have adapted them as an important component of quantum simulators.

The initial loading of atoms into optical tweezers is random, and researchers need to move the atoms to place them in the shape of the target. Researchers use a second set of moving optical tweezers to drag the atom to the desired position, eliminating the initial randomness. Lasers give researchers complete control over the placement of atomic cubits and their coherent quantum manipulation.

Other senior authors of this study include Professors Svil Sachidef and Marcus Greiner of Harvard University, Stanford University, University of California Berkeley, and Insbrook University of Austria, who worked on the project with Professor Vladin Vretti of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Includes scientists. Austrian Academy of Sciences and QuEra Computing Inc. in Boston.

Our work is part of a very fierce, highly visible global competition to build larger, better quantum computers, said Harvard University Physics Researcher. Tout Wang, one of the authors of the paper, said. Overall effort [beyond our own] There are leading academic research institutes involved and major private sector investments from Google, IBM, Amazon, and many others.

Researchers are currently working on improving the system by improving laser control over qubits and making the system more programmable. They are also actively exploring how systems can be used in new applications, from exploring the exotic forms of quantum materials to solving challenging real-world problems that can be naturally encoded into qubits. doing.

This study enables a huge number of new scientific directions, Evadi said. We are far from the limits of what we can do with these systems.

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Harvard-led physicists have taken a major step in the competition with quantum computing

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Harvard-led physicists have taken a major step in the competition with quantum computing - Illinoisnewstoday.com