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The University of Ottawa is teaming up with a Toronto-based company to develop and commercialize high-powered quantum computing technology.

The university said this week its signed a memorandum of understanding with Xanadu, one of the worlds leading suppliers of quantum hardware and software, to create new courses aimed at training the next generation of quantum computing experts as well as develop algorithms to make high-speed quantum computers even more powerful.

The one-year agreement, which has the option of being renewed, is expected to take effect in September. Sylvain Charbonneau, the universitys vice-president of research and innovation, said it will make uOttawa a leader in discovering real-world applications for quantum computing.

This partnership will help elevate emerging quantum research by giving our students and researchers access to the cutting-edge technologies and expertise held at Xanadu, he said in a statement.

It has the potential to change lives as we train the next generation of quantum pioneers, and work with industry experts to develop and commercialize real-life applications.

Xanadu will provide an undisclosed amount of funding for the research program. The federal government which last year said it planned to invest $360 million in a national strategy to advance quantum research is also expected to help fund the project.

Combining uOttawa's deep knowledge in quantum photonics with Xanadu's industry-leading expertise in quantum hardware and software will pave the way for tackling today's most important scientific and engineering challenges, Josh Izaac, Xanadu's director of product, said in a statement.

Under the agreement, uOttawa researchers will use Xanadus hardware and software to test quantum computing technology in real-world settings and help find ways of commercializing it.

Charbonneau said Xanadu which was founded in Toronto in 2016 and now employs more than 130 people will also help the school create new quantum diploma and certificate programs that straddle the border between science and engineering.

Quantum computing uses the laws of quantum physics, tapping into the world of atoms and molecules to create computers that are many times faster and more powerful than traditional digital computers.

Charbonneau said the technology has a wide range of applications, including encrypting data to make it more difficult for hackers to crack and creating ultra-powerful sensors for industries such as health care and mining.

The veteran academic said recent market research suggests quantum computing will be an $86-billion industry by 2040.

Its going to be big, he told Techopia on Wednesday afternoon. If youre (the Department of National Defence) and you want to communicate securely between A and B, youre going to use quantum cryptography for sure.

Charbonneau said uOttawa currently has more than 70 faculty members involved in quantum research, from faculties as diverse as engineering, law and physics. About a dozen of them will be part of the universitys quantum research team, and they will be assisted by upwards of 100 graduate and PhD students.

The new deal with Xanadu promises to boost uOttawas growing expertise in the field of quantum research.

The agreement comes seven years after the launch of the Max Planck uOttawa Centre for Extreme and Quantum Photonics. The facility was created to provide a forum for researchers from the university and the Max Planck Society, a non-profit association of German research institutes, to work together on technology such as high-intensity lasers.

Charbonneau said quantum computing is getting closer to becoming mainstream, and uOttawa hopes to lead the pack when it comes to training developers and programmers.

Talent really is the new currency, and were capable of providing it to the ecosystem, he said.

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Quantum leap: uOttawa partners with TO firm in bid to commercialize high-powered computing technology - Ottawa Business Journal

The annual Think conference unveils an expanded roadmap for quantum computing and plans for 4,000+ qubit system in 2025

ARMONK, N.Y., May 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today kicked off its annual Think conference in Boston, bringing together clients and IBM Ecosystem partners around the world to discuss how technology drives organizations to excel in a digital world. During the event, IBM senior executives, global business leaders, and industry experts will discuss significant advances in technology and issues such as sustainability, innovation and research, talent retention, and automation.

"Technology is now the source of competitive advantage with digital transformation leading the way. Our clients and partners trust IBM to deliver the innovation behind hybrid cloud, AI, and consulting solutions that are helping to ensure their success," said Arvind Krishna, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IBM. "Our Think events will showcase how IBM is co-creating with an expanding ecosystem to make progress on the most pressing issues enterprises and society face today."

Major announcements from Think 2022 include:

Extending the Roadmap for Practical and Large-Scale Quantum ComputingToday's announcement showcases the expansion of IBM's roadmap to achieve practical quantum computing and deliver a 4,000+ qubit system in 2025. This roadmap lays out plans for new modular architectures and networking that will allow quantum systems to have larger qubit counts up to hundreds of thousands of qubits. To enable these systems with the speed and quality necessary for practical quantum computing, IBM plans to continue building intelligent software to distribute workloads across quantum and classical resources, and abstract away infrastructure challenges.

For more information on IBM's expanded quantum roadmap, please visit the IBM Research blog: https://www.research.ibm.com/blog/ibm-quantum-roadmap-2025.

Global Insights from IBM Shows Steady Growth in AI and Sustainability PrioritizationIBM issued the Global AI Adoption Index 2022, which surveyed 7,502 senior business decision-makers and showed business adoption of AI grew steadily in the last 12 months.

Business leaders' prioritization of sustainability on corporate agendas was further highlighted in a new IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) CEO study which surveyed more than 3,000 CEOs worldwide.

Partnership Momentum Continues to AccelerateAs part of a long-standing partnership with SAP, IBM is undertaking one of the world's largest corporate SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) transformation projects designed to better support clients and fuel its company growth.

Tackling the Talent Shortage and Cybersecurity though SkillsBuilding on a commitment to skill 30 million people by 2030, IBM is addressing the talent shortage and cybersecurity crisis with new and expanded partnerships with six Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs), the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Specialisterne Foundation.

During his keynote today, Krishna will be joined on stage by three visionaries creatively applying technology to business to drive change. These "New Creators" include Bryan Young, Co-Founder & CEO, Home Lending Pal, who is using technology to make the homebuying process more equitable for underserved communities; Dr. Rania Khalaf, CIO & CDO, Inari, who is using AI to create a more sustainable future for the food system; and Kiersten Todt, Chief of Staff, U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), who is using technology to reduce risk to the cyber and physical infrastructures Americans rely on every day. "New Creators" will be featured throughout the Think on Tour events. In addition, various "New Creators" will be featured in print, digital, out-of-home, and video marketing assets as part of IBM's "Let's Create" integrated brand platform.

Think Broadcast, produced with WIRED Brand Lab, can be accessed at http://www.ibm.com/Think and will air 10 a.m. ET 12 p.m. ET May 10 and 11 in English, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, and Simplified Chinese. Replays of the onstage sessions from Think Boston will also be available on-demand the day of the event at http://www.ibm.com/Think.

Following the flagship event in Boston, Think on Tour will travel to more than a dozen cities around the world. For updates on confirmed cities, please visit: https://www.ibm.com/events/think/on-tour/.

About IBMIBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider, helping clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 3,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently, and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity, and service.

For more information, visit https://www.ibm.com.

Media Contact:Amanda CarlIBM Communications[emailprotected]

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IBM Kicks Off Think 2022 Conference, Convening a Worldwide Community of Clients and Partners - GuruFocus.com

The power of quantum research

The Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) harnesses the quantum laws of nature to develop powerful new technologies. Our interdisciplinary research spans theory and experiment; fosters collaborations across science borders; and focuses on four core research pillars:quantum computing,quantum communication,quantum sensing andquantum materials.

Quantum computing harnesses the quantum behaviour of atoms, molecules, and nanoelectronic circuits for a radically different and fundamentally more powerful way of computing. Quantum computers promise tremendous advances in information science and technology with many potential applications from simulating new drugs to designing materials and beyond.

By harnessing the laws of quantum mechanics, quantum sensors achieve the ultimate limits in sensitivity, selectivity and efficiency. Quantum sensors play a critical role in material science, neuroscience, personalized medicine, improved cancer treatment, geological exploration, defence and more.

In today's connected world, we rely on communication networks for everything from banking to education, from global business exchanges to national defence. Through the study of quantum communication, researchers are developing ultra-secure communication channels, quantum-safe cryptography protocols and global quantum networks that leverage the power of the quantum world.

By engineering how materials are built at the quantum scale, devices with unique properties emerge. The development of novel quantum materials is leading to applications such as energy storage, transportation, and laying the foundation for practical quantum information processing devices.

IQC has a critical mass of expertise in several major research areas within quantum information, including but not limited to:

Our vibrant community brings together scientists, mathematicians and engineers to advance quantum opportunities. Explore the advances our theoretical and experimental researchers are leading in their research groups.

Alan Jamison likes looking at what happens when individuals become groups. Do behaviours change? Or do the groups act as expected? He examines these questions in his lab where he sticks laser-cooled atoms together to create molecules. Its a frigid temperature around 100 nanoKelvin cold one billion times colder than Antarctica in winter.

Can quantum technologies help keep our eyes healthy? Researchers at IQC have constructed a device designed to do just that. A collaboration between two very different teams led to the development of diagnostic tools to detect macular degeneration in patients earlier.

At IQC, Dmitry Pushin's team is interested in how the human eye interprets different states of light. They realized their research overlapped with Ben Thompson's research group in the School of Optometry that studies how the eye and brain see light, specifically in macular degeneration.

As a physics undergraduate student, Crystal Senko explored the labs of Duke University, not realizing she was about to set forth on a future career path in quantum research. Intrigued by a forest of optics on the table of an atomic physics lab, she entered the world of experimental research and hasnt looked back.

Now, as principal investigator of the Trapped Ion Quantum Control lab at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC), Senko and her team are paving the way towards the realization of a trapped-ion quantum computer.

The graphics processing unit (GPU) was a windfall for artificial intelligence, as the architecture turned out to be well-suited for deep learning. What if quantum computing enabled an even more advanced form of artificial intelligence (AI)?

Machine learning depends on Big Data right now, said Pooya Ronagh. A deep learning program might need to see tens of thousands of pictures of cats and dogs to learn the difference. But human intelligence even a toddler might be able to learn the same thing with a single drawing.

Perhaps quantum machine learning could bridge that gap.

The quantum revolution is happening, and that means our private information won't stay private for long. Powerful quantum computers will have the ability to crack the encryption of public keys that we currently use to secure our banking and so much more.

But there is hope for the future. Quantum physics also provides a way to secure our information with an unbreakable lock: Quantum Key Distribution (QKD).

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Research | Institute for Quantum Computing | University of Waterloo

A quantum computer in a vibration-free building. Quantum computing will ultimately speed up the computational power that drives many industries and could affect everything from drug discovery to how data is secured.

Oliver Berg | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

Quantum computing was already gathering pace in Japan and elsewhere in Asia when the University of Tokyo and IBM launched their new quantum computer last year.

The computer was the second such system built outside the United States by IBM the latest in a string of key moves in quantum research.

The university and IBM have led the Quantum Innovation Initiative Consortium alongside heavyweights of Japanese industry like Toyota and Sony all with a view to nailing the quantum question.

Quantum computing refers to the use of quantum mechanics to run calculations. Quantum computing can run multiple processes at once by using quantum bits, unlike binary bits which power traditional computing.

The new technology will ultimately speed up the computational power that drives many industries and could affect everything from drug discovery to how data is secured. Several countries are racing to get quantum computers fully operational.

Christopher Savoie, CEO of quantum computing firm Zapata, who spent much of his career in Japan, said technological development has been very U.S.-centric. But now, Asian nations don't want to be left behind on quantum computing, he added.

"Nation states like India, Japan and China are very much interested in not being the only folks without a capability there. They don't want to see the kind of hegemony that's arisen where the large cloud aggregators by and large are only US companies," Savoie said, referring to the likes of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

China, for example, has committed a great deal of brainpower to the quantum race. Researchers have touted breakthroughs and debates are simmering over whether China has surpassed the U.S. on some fronts.

India, for its part, announced plans earlier this year to invest $1 billion in a five-year plan to develop a quantum computer in the country.

James Sanders, an analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence, told CNBC that governments around the world have been taking more interest in quantum computing in recent years.

In March, Sanders published a report that found governments have pledged around $4.2 billion to support quantum research. Some notable examples include South Korea's $40 million investment in the field and Singapore's Ministry of Education's funding of a research center, The Center for Quantum Technologies.

All of these efforts have a long lens on the future. And for some, the benefits of quantum can seem nebulous.

According to Sanders, the benefits of quantum computing aren't going to be immediately evident for everyday consumers.

What is likely to happen is that quantum computers will wind up utilized in designing products that consumers eventually buy.

James Sanders

analyst, S&P Global Market Intelligence

"On a bad day, I'm talking people down from the idea of quantum cell phones. That's not realistic, that's not going to be a thing," he said.

"What is likely to happen is that quantum computers will wind up utilized in designing products that consumers eventually buy."

There are two major areas where quantum's breakthrough will be felt industry and defense.

A staff member of tech company Q.ant puts a chip for quantum computing in a test station in Stuttgart, Germany, on Sept. 14, 2021. It's expected that the power of quantum computing will be able to decrypt RSA encryption, one of the most common encryption methods for securing data.

Thomas Kienzle | Afp | Getty Images

"Areas where you have HPC [high-performance computing] are areas where we will be seeing quantum computers having an impact. It's things like material simulation, aerodynamic simulation, these kinds of things, very high, difficult computational problems, and then machine learning artificial intelligence," Savoie said.

In pharmaceuticals, traditional systems for calculating the behavior of drug molecules can be time-consuming. The speed of quantum computing could rapidly increase these processes around drug discovery and, ultimately, the timeline for drugs coming to market.

On the flip side, quantum could present security challenges. As computing power advances, so too does the risk to existing security methods.

"The longer-term [motivation] but the one that that everyone recognizes as an existential threat, both offensively and defensively, is the cryptography area. RSA will be eventually compromised by this," Savoie added.

RSA refers to one of the most common encryption methods for securing data, developed in 1977, that could be upended by quantum's speed. It is named after its inventors Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman.

You're seeing a lot of interest from governments and communities that don't want to be the last people on the block to have that technology because [other nations] will be able to decrypt our messages.

Christopher Savoie

CEO of Zapata

"You're seeing a lot of interest from governments and communities that don't want to be the last people on the block to have that technology because [other nations] will be able to decrypt our messages," Savoie said.

Magda Lilia Chelly, chief information security officer at Singaporean cybersecurity firm Responsible Cyber, told CNBC that there needs to be a twin track of encryption and quantum research and development so that security isn't outpaced.

"Some experts believe that quantum computers will eventually be able to break all forms of encryption, while others believe that new and more sophisticated forms of encryption will be developed that cannot be broken by quantum computers," Chelly said.

A quantum processor on a prototype of a quantum computer. There needs to be a twin track of encryption and quantum research and development so that security isn't outpaced, said Magda Lilia Chelly, chief information security officer at Singaporean cybersecurity firm Responsible Cyber.

Julian Stratenschulte/dpa | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

"In particular, [researchers] have been looking at ways to use quantum computers to factor large numbers quickly. This is important because many of the modern encryption schemes used today rely on the fact that it is very difficult to factor large numbers," she added.

If successful, this would make it possible to break most current encryption schemes, making it possible to unlock messages that are encrypted.

Sanders said the development and eventual commercialization of quantum computing will not be a straight line.

Issues like the threat to encryption can garner attention from governments, but research and breakthroughs, as well as mainstream interest, can be "stop-start," he said.

Progress can also be affected by fluctuating interest of private investors as quantum computing won't deliver a quick return on investment.

"There are a lot of situations in this industry where you might have a lead for a week and then another company will come out with another type of the advancement and then everything will go quiet for a little bit."

Another looming challenge for quantum research is finding the right talent with specific skills for this research.

"Quantum scientists that can do quantum computing don't grow on trees," Savoie said, adding that cross-border collaboration is necessary in the face of competing government interests.

"Talent is global. People don't get to choose what country they're born in or what nationality they have."

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The race toward a new computing technology is heating up and Asia is jumping on the trend - CNBC

LEESBURG, Va., June 07, 2022 Quantum Computing Inc. today unveiled QAmplify, a suite of quantum software technologies designed to expand the processing power of current quantum computers by up to 20x. QAmplify is intended to supercharge any quantum computer to solve business problems today. The company is actively working with customers and partners in scaling the amplification capabilities of its ready-to-run Qatalystsoftware, which is designed to eliminate the need for complex quantum programming and runs seamlessly across a variety of quantum computers. QCI has filed for patents on QAmplify technology.

Currently there are two primary technology approaches that deliver a wide range of capabilities spanning the current Quantum Processing Unit (QPU) hardware landscape; gate model (e.g. IBM, IonQ, Rigetti, OQC, etc.) and annealing (e.g. D-Wave) quantum computers. Both are limited in the size of problems (i.e., number of variables and complexity of computations) they can process. For example, gate models can typically process from 10-120 data variables, and annealing machines can process approximately 400 variables in a simple problem set. These small problem sets restrict the size of the problems that can be solved by todays QPUs, limiting businesses ability to explore the value of quantum computing.

QCIs patent-pending QAmplify suite of powerful QPU-expansion software technologies overcomes these challenges, dramatically increasing the problem set size that each can process. The QAmplify gate model expansions demonstrated capabilities have been benchmarked at a 500% (5x) increase and the annealing expansion has been benchmarked at up to a 2,000% (20x) increase.

QAmplify maximizes end-user investment in current QPUs by allowing quantum users to transform from science experiments to solving real-world problems without waiting for the quantum hardware industry to catch up. For example, in terms of real-world applications, this means that an IBM quantum computer with QAmplify could solve a problem with over 600 variables, versus the current limit of 127 variables. A D-Wave annealing computer with QAmplify could solve an optimization with over 4,000 variables, versus the current limit of 200 for a dense matrix problem set.

It is central to QCIs mission to deliver practical and sustainable value to the quantum computing industry, said William McGann, Chief Operating and Technology Officer of QCI. QCIs innovative software solutions deliver expansive compute capabilities for todays state-of-the-art QPU systems and offer great future scalability as those technologies continually advance. The use of our QAmplify algorithm in the2021 BMW Group Quantum Computing Challengefor vehicle sensor optimization provided proof of performance by expanding the effective capability of the annealer by 20-fold, to 2,888 qubits.

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Quantum Computing Inc. Unveils Software Built to Expand Quantum Processing Power By Up to 20x - insideHPC - insideHPC