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IBM wants to build a 100,000-qubit quantum computing machine within the next 10 years, according to MIT Technology Review.

Biggish Blue has managed to build a 433-quantum bit, or qubits machine so far, making it the world leader. IBM announced the move at the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan. The company will partner with the University of Tokyo and the University of Chicago in a 100-million-dollar initiative to push quantum computing into full-scale operation, where the technology could tackle pressing problems that no standard supercomputer can solve.

The 100,000 qubits machine will work alongside supercomputers to achieve breakthroughs in drug discovery, fertiliser production, battery performance, and other applications. It is unclear were potentially dead or alive cats will be involved.

IBM's VP of quantum, Jay Gambetta, told MIT Technology Review that IBM has already done proof-of-principle experiments (PDF) showing that integrated circuits based on "complementary metal oxide semiconductor" (CMOS) technology can be installed next to the cold qubits to control them with just tens of milliwatts.

However, beyond that, he admits, the technology required for quantum-centric supercomputing does not yet exist: that is why academic research is a vital part of the project.

The qubits will exist on a modular chip that is only beginning to take shape in IBM labs.

Modularity, essential when it will be impossible to put enough qubits on a single chip, requires interconnects that transfer quantum information between modules.

IBM's "Kookaburra," a 1,386-qubit multichip processor with a quantum communication link, is under development and slated for release in 2025. Gambetta says that boffins at Tokyo and Chicago have already made significant strides in components and communication innovations that could be vital parts of the final product.

Gambetta thinks there will likely be many more industry-academic partnerships over the next decade.

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IBM wants to build a 100,000-qubit quantum computer in 10 years - Fudzilla

Muhammad Usman, CSIRO

Artificial intelligence algorithms are quickly becoming a part of everyday life. Many systems that require strong security are either already underpinned by machine learning or soon will be. These systems include facial recognition, banking, military targeting applications, and robots and autonomous vehicles, to name a few.

This raises an important question: how secure are these machine learning algorithms against malicious attacks?

In an article published in Nature Machine Intelligence, my colleagues at the University of Melbourne and I discuss a potential solution to the vulnerability of machine learning models.

We propose that the integration of quantum computing in these models could yield new algorithms with strong resilience against adversarial attacks.

Machine learning algorithms can be remarkably accurate and efficient for many tasks. They are particularly useful for classifying and identifying image features. However, theyre also highly vulnerable to data manipulation attacks, which can pose serious security risks.

Data manipulation attacks which involve the very subtle manipulation of image data can be launched in several ways. An attack may be launched by mixing corrupt data into a training dataset used to train an algorithm, leading it to learn things it shouldnt.

Manipulated data can also be injected during the testing phase (after training is complete), in cases where the AI system continues to train the underlying algorithms while in use.

People can even carry out such attacks from the physical world. Someone could put a sticker on a stop sign to fool a self-driving cars AI into identifying it as a speed-limit sign. Or, on the front lines, troops might wear uniforms that can fool AI-based drones into identifying them as landscape features.

Either way, the consequences of data manipulation attacks can be severe. For example, if a self-driving car uses a machine learning algorithm that has been compromised, it may incorrectly predict there are no humans on the road when there are.

In our article, we describe how integrating quantum computing with machine learning could give rise to secure algorithms called quantum machine learning models.

These algorithms are carefully designed to exploit special quantum properties that would allow them to find specific patterns in image data that arent easily manipulated. The result would be resilient algorithms that are safe against even powerful attacks. They also wouldnt require the expensive adversarial training currently used to teach algorithms how to resist such attacks.

Beyond this, quantum machine learning could allow for faster algorithmic training and more accuracy in learning features.

Todays classical computers work by storing and processing information as bits, or binary digits, the smallest unit of data a computer can process. In classical computers, which follow the laws of classical physics, bits are represented as binary numbers specifically 0s and 1s.

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Quantum computing, on the other hand, follows principles used in quantum physics. Information in quantum computers is stored and processed as qubits (quantum bits) which can exist as 0, 1, or a combination of both at once. A quantum system that exists in multiple states at once is said to be in a superposition state. Quantum computers can be used to design clever algorithms that exploit this property.

However, while there are significant potential benefits in using quantum computing to secure machine learning models, it could also be a double-edged sword.

On one hand, quantum machine learning models will provide critical security for many sensitive applications. On the other, quantum computers could be used to generate powerful adversarial attacks, capable of easily deceiving even state-of-the-art conventional machine learning models.

Moving forward, well need to seriously consider the best ways to protect our systems; an adversary with access to early quantum computers would pose a significant security threat.

The current evidence suggests were still some years away from quantum machine learning becoming a reality, due to limitations in the current generation of quantum processors.

Todays quantum computers are relatively small (with fewer than 500 qubits) and their error rates are high. Errors may arise for several reasons, including imperfect fabrication of qubits, errors in the control circuitry, or loss of information (called quantum decoherence) through interaction with the environment.

Still, weve seen enormous progress in quantum hardware and software over the past few years. According to recent quantum hardware roadmaps, its anticipated quantum devices made in coming years will have hundreds to thousands of qubits.

These devices should be able to run powerful quantum machine learning models to help protect a large range of industries that rely on machine learning and AI tools.

Worldwide, governments and private sectors alike are increasing their investment in quantum technologies.

This month the Australian government launched the National Quantum Strategy, aimed at growing the nations quantum industry and commercialising quantum technologies. According to the CSIRO, Australias quantum industry could be worth about A$2.2 billion by 2030.

Muhammad Usman, Principal Research Scientist and Team Leader, CSIRO

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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From self-driving cars to the military: quantum computing can help ... - Cosmos

Quantum algorithms are becoming important because of their accelerated processing speed over classical algorithms for solving complex problems1,2,3,4,5. However, using quantum algorithms to solve practical problems is difficult because quantum states are very susceptible to noise, which can cause critical errors in the execution of quantum algorithms. In other words, quantum errors caused by noise pose a major obstacle to the realization of quantum algorithms.

The quantum circuit model is a well-known model for quantum computation. In this model, quantum algorithms are represented by quantum circuits composed of qubits and gates. Since noise arises from the evolution of quantum states, gate operations are the major cause of noise. Therefore, quantum circuits should be designed with a minimal number of gates, especially in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) arena6,7.

Within the realm of quantum logic synthesis, quantum circuits are broken down into gates derived from a universal gate library. The basic gate library consists of CNOT and single-qubit gates8,9. Since CNOT gates are considered the main generators of quantum errors and have a longer execution time compared to single-qubit gates10, CNOT gates are expected to dominate the cost of quantum circuits when using the basic gate library.

When considering the cost of a quantum circuit, connectivity between qubits should also be taken into account. This is because physical limitations in quantum hardware may enforce quantum circuits to adopt the nearest-neighbor (NN) architecture10,11. The NN architecture means that a qubit in the circuit only interacts with adjacent qubits.

The quantum Fourier transform (QFT) is an essential tool for many quantum algorithms, such as quantum addition12, quantum phase estimation (QPE)13, quantum amplitude estimation (QAE)3, the algorithm for solving linear systems of equations4, and Shors factoring algorithm1, to name a few. Therefore, the cost optimization of QFT would result in the efficiency improvement of these quantum algorithms.

There have been studies aimed at reducing circuit costs of QFT8,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22. Among them are studies related to the number of CNOT gates in QFT, including the following:

When constructing an (n)-qubit QFT circuit using the basic gate library, (n(n-1)) CNOT gates are required, provided that qubit reordering is allowed8. Qubit reordering implies that the sequence of qubits can be altered before and after the execution of the circuit.

In Ref.14, the authors incorporated (n(n-1)/2) extra SWAP gates to develop an (n)-qubit linear nearest-neighbor (LNN) QFT circuit, which accommodates qubit reordering.

To synthesize a single SWAP gate using the basic gate library, three CNOT gates are required8.

Consequently, the total number of CNOT gates required for the (n)-qubit LNN QFT circuit presented in Ref.14 is (5n(n-1)/2).

By employing SWAP gates in the construction of LNN QFT circuits, the primary term representing the quantity of CNOT gates increases by a factor of 2.5.

Previous research efforts, as documented in case studies, have investigated techniques to minimize the amount of SWAP gates required in the LNN architecture when assembling (n)-qubit LNN QFT circuits15,16,17,18. These studies aimed to optimize the circuit design and improve overall efficiency.

In this paper, we propose a new n-qubit LNN QFT circuit design that directly utilizes CNOT gates, unlike previous studies14,15,16,17,18 that utilized SWAP gates. Our approach offers a significant advantage by synthesizing a more compact QFT circuit using CNOT gates instead of SWAP gates, as the implementation of each SWAP gate requires three CNOT gates. Upon qubit reordering, our (n)-qubit LNN QFT circuit requires ({n}^{2}+n-4) CNOT gates, which are 40% of those in Ref.14 asymptotically. Furthermore, we demonstrate that our circuit design significantly reduces the number of CNOT gates compared to the best-known results for 5- to 10-qubit LNN QFT circuits17,18.

In the following analysis, we compare our QFT circuit with the conventional QFT circuit8 when used as inputs for the Qiskit transpiler23, which is required for implementation on IBM quantum computers that necessitate NN architecture10. Our findings confirm that using our QFT circuit as input requires fewer CNOT gates in comparison to the conventional QFT circuits. This evidence indicates that our QFT circuit design could serve as a foundation for synthesizing QFT circuits that are compatible with NN architecture, potentially leading to more efficient implementations.

Furthermore, we present experimental results from implementing the QPE using 3-qubit QFTs on actual quantum hardware, specifically the IBM_Nairobi10 and Rigetti Aspen-1111 systems. We also illustrate the decomposition of controlled-({R}_{y}) gates that share a target qubit using our proposed method. This particular circuit is often found in QAE, which is anticipated to supplant classical Monte Carlo integration methods24,25. By providing these results, we aim to highlight the practicality and effectiveness of our approach in real-world quantum computing applications.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: in the Background section, we provide a brief overview of quantum circuits, QFT, QPE, and QAE. The proposed approach section outlines our method for constructing LNN QFT circuits. In the resultsand discussion section, we present the outcomes of transpilation on IBM quantum computers, display the experimental results of QPE executions on quantum hardware, and illustrate how to convert a circuit of controlled-({R}_{y}) gates sharing the target qubit into an LNN circuit using our proposed method. We also address the limitations of our study and suggest potential future research directions. Finally, we conclude the paper with a summary of our findings and their implications for the field of quantum computing.

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Reducing CNOT count in quantum Fourier transform for the linear ... - Nature.com

A recently signed pact with the United States is expected to deliver benefits beyond clean energy or new mines by also boosting national security.

Company bosses and policymakers are still coming to grips with what the deal signed last weekend will mean.

But it's clear the Australia-US Climate, Critical Minerals, and Clean Energy Transformation Compact will pull the two industrial bases together against China's might.

"Nothing but goodness can come from that agreement," cyber security expert Tony Burnside told AAP.

"It makes us more secure."

The pact signalled an intent to deepen collaboration on the materials and know-how that are vital to defence supply chains and clean energy.

Mr Burnside, vice-president at Netskope, said the US was likely to experience certain attacks before anyone else, and information sharing would be crucial.

"In our industry, we collaborate with vendors for the same reason - they may see something, an attack on a computer before we do, or vice versa," hesaid.

Netskope is a global leader in cloud, data and network security and in managing the safe use of artificial intelligence and robotics.

"Many of us have been in the space for years," Mr Burnside said.

But with the spread of chatbot ChatGPT and Google's conversational version called Bard, change is accelerating and Australia must get on board.

"We've got to really keep up with the bad guys out there and, from a competitive standpoint, the other countries that are leveraging it," Mr Burnside said.

He said quantum computing will be key. It's so powerful that it will outmatch existing encryption standards now protecting systems and data.

"We can't rule out some states using quantum computing for cyber warfare in the upcoming years," he said.

"And it won't be too long before hackers also get access to quantum computing."

Quantum-resistant encryption standards are in the works, and the US government has already asked all of its agencies and their suppliers to use quantum-resistant encryption by 2035.

Story continues

President Joe Biden will ask the US Congress to add Australia as a "domestic source" under the US Defense Production Act.

The designation means Australia will be the second country after Canada to be considered for the special status.

It will enable US industry to increase production and investment in Australia, including critical minerals and defence technologies, and allow local firmsto apply for US funding.

"It's important to note, this would not give the US government any authority to direct Australian industry," a spokesperson for the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet told AAP.

Minerals Council chief executive Tania Constable also wants Australia to makenational security part of the critical minerals boom.

Competing with trillion-dollar tax incentives and funding in North America and Europe, Australia's $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund includes $1 billion for critical technologies and $1 billion for advanced manufacturing.

Australia's new critical technologies list is already out and has the stamp of approval from Netskope and other industry leaders for backing quantum computing and AI.

"Bringing in defence procurement is really important and the links that are made with other countries like the United States on those," Ms Constable told AAP.

"We need to think more broadly than just direct funding," she said.

"But there will be more federal budgets to come and hopefully the critical minerals strategy (due out soon) will set out a pathway and framework for those additional incentives."

Meanwhile, the latest critical technologies list has the stamp of approval from Netskope and other industry leaders in space and defence, advanced manufacturing and energy.

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Australia-US compact to help keep up with the bad guys - Yahoo News Australia

Such a plot always struck me as a bit far-fetched, for starters because politicians arent known for putting party ahead of self. Yet the appetite among elite Republicans to move past Trump was and is so immense I thought there could at least be a do-the-right-thing effort.

Yet as spring turns to summer, traditionally the period when presidential hopefuls consider whether theyre gaining any traction, this vision seems more fantasy than strategy.

In fact, if Trump does emerge as the GOP standard bearer next year we will look back on this week to grasp why, just like in 2016, he was able to take advantage of a divided opposition.

There was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis muffed launch, the fitting, sad trombone conclusion to a preannouncement period in which his stock sagged, at least among political insiders.

Nobody was more thrilled about DeSantis decision to begin his campaign on a balky Twitter stream than his current and prospective Republican rivals: Trump sees his fellow Floridian as weaker today than at any point since last years midterm, and the other non-Trumps are hardly going to step aside anytime soon, even after DeSantis eye-popping first fundraising haul.

And if DeSantis needs any more evidence that his giving the Heisman to the press has earned him only bad will, well, he can just take a look at the headlines from a range of outlets. Dont discount this: Complain as they may about the media, Republican primary voters are just as susceptible to the tides of coverage as their Democratic counterparts.

Shortly before DeSantis began his bid for the office of Washington and Lincoln in a chat room with other very online influencers, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) entered the race in a fashion that further underscored why its going to be so hard to dethrone Trump.

Announcing his candidacy Monday in the gym of his alma mater, Charleston Southern University, Scott matched DeSantis Elon Musk with Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Larry Ellison (Billionaire-Oracle).

Each of them conveyed an important message.

By laying hands on Scott, Thune, the second-ranking Senate Republican, sent a signal to the wider, pre-Trump GOP establishment that the only Black senator in the GOP is one of them. That may not mean a lot of votes, but along with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnells tacit embrace (I reported last year that McConnell was enthusiastic about a Scott candidacy), it conveys a message to the Republican donor class.

Thune may soon have more company in the Senate GOP: He told Scott supporters privately later in the day that other Republican lawmakers would already be backing their colleague, the only senator in the race, were it not for their concerns about angering Trump, according to a person present for the conversation. Even more to the point, Thune, when asked who Scott as nominee could win back to the party, asked, How much time you got? and then ticked off demographic groups ranging from women to moderates to educated voters.

Such potential is what will make Scott appealing to victory-hungry Republicans. Theyre also the sort of party regulars DeSantis will ultimately need as part of any coalition he forms to stop Trump. If such voters migrate to Scott, that task gets harder.

While Thunes appearance, along with the veritable battalion of former Bush and Romney strategists working for Scott, signaled establishment acceptability, Ellison demonstrated why coalescence could prove difficult against Trump.

Scott has relentlessly wooed the Oracle co-founder. The senator flew to Hawaii to meet with Ellison over the holidays and even name-checked him as a mentor in his announcement speech.

Now, Ellison is prepared to spend tens of millions of dollars on behalf of Scott.

As the saying goes, presidential campaigns dont end, they run out of money. But thats less of a factor when one of the worlds richest men is willing to part with tens of millions of dollars on a super PAC extending the life of a candidacy.

Ellison was hardly alone: Also in the stands, before being herded away by Scott campaign officials after the event, were a group of noticeably well-tailored individuals. The donors later convened at a restaurant on Charlestons old market before attending another event with Scott on Tuesday morning at the luxe Hotel Bennett, where many of them stayed.

Lastly, there was Scotts speech itself. There was alliterative call-and-response (Victimhood or victory?), there was entering the crowd at the end, there were testimonials to Americas greatness and there was the gospel of Jesus Christ, self-help and the power of positive thinking. It was the Black church meets the mega church, set to a Lee Greenwood-Thomas Jefferson soundtrack while Jack Kemp and Ronald Reagan smiled down from above over a Chick-fil-A lunch.

In other words, Scott happily railed against wokeness without ever saying the word woke, precisely the sort of messaging that will appeal to Republicans done with Trump who want a duller edge than DeSantis. That may not be enough for Scott to emerge as Trumps top rival let alone claim the nomination of a party craving the clenched first more than the open hand but he could find a constituency.

Yes, Black Republicans have had boomlets before. But Herman Cain and Ben Carson didnt begin with nearly $22 million in the bank and have Senate leaders and plutocrats, to say nothing of respected moderates such as former Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and former Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner at their announcements.

Another reveal this week came from the emerging Hamlet-on-the-James, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Axios reported right as Scott launched and DeSantis was preparing to that Youngkin was again considering a presidential bid. The story irritated some members of the governors inner circle, who want to focus on Virginias legislative midterms this fall, but what was striking was their denials stopped short of, well, actually denying that he will get in the race.

Youngkins refusal to fully rule out a 2024 bid illustrates both how much he wants to keep the option open and the lingering hunger in the top ranks of the party for another option. That said and insert a trigger warning here for veterans of the Wes Clark, Rick Perry and Michael Bloomberg campaigns late entrants have invariably flopped in modern primaries.

But, again, this is all delightful to Trump, who is thrilled about the prospect of more candidates carving up the opposition. Never one for subtext, the former president responded to Scotts entry by gleefully saying the primary is rapidly loading up with lots of people.

Lastly, there was one other sign this week of Trumps unique strength in the GOP, but you may have had to look for it. It was when former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley used an appearance before reporters in New Hampshire to target DeSantis for copying Trump with his speaking style and even his hand gestures.

It was an admission from Haley, the first candidate after the former president to enter the race, that shes not breaking through and must dislodge DeSantis to take on Trump. It was also an illustration of how little regard the other Republicans in the race have for DeSantis and the risk the Florida governor faces of these candidates cutting a deal with Trump to stay in the race and divide up the vote in exchange for some promise of, say, the vice-presidency or wokeness czar.

Perhaps most significant, Haleys criticism of the person in second rather than the one leading most state and national surveys by double-digits highlighted the central challenge non-Trump Republicans are confronting: their own voters.

Nikki Haleys criticism of Ron DeSantis, the person in second, rather than Donald Trump highlighted the central challenge non-Trump Republicans are confronting: their own voters. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images

After years of absorbing attacks on Trump from Democrats and the media and the former president happily embracing, to borrow from Scott, the role of both victim and victor the GOP rank-and-file is largely inured to frontal attacks on a man most of them have now voted for twice in general elections.

The conservative media ecosystem has built a giant wall of inoculation around everything Trump, explained David Kochel. All our voters have ever known about Trump is hes constantly under attack, so hes got these antibodies built up.

Kochel, a native Iowan and longtime Republican strategist, has talked to voters in his home state at length about Trumps candidacy. He has consistently found that they defend or rationalize most every critique of the former president. Its not that they arent aware of the indictments arrayed against him (literally, folks), its that they excuse it all because its tribal, he said.

To forcefully condemn Trump as a menace to democracy is to echo the other tribe, to put on the blue jersey. Shaming your own voters is not a recipe for victory.

Kochel thinks Trump can be stopped in the primary but believes his partys voters require a permission structure. Its equal parts electability a strong and persistent drumbeat of arguments that Trump cant win the general election, a refrain I heard from the many middle- to upper middle-class voters at Scotts announcement and confronting the former president from the right on the border wall with Mexico, Covid restrictions and government spending.

Weve already seen some of this criticism from DeSantis since he entered the race. And theres a debate taking place within his orbit about how much to balance introducing the Florida governor and how quickly to get to confronting Trump, framing him, as one DeSantis adviser put it, as a whiner, not a winner.

Somebody will have to.

For anti-Trump Republicans, faith in the invisible hand has taken on a whole new meaning that has nothing to do with Adam Smith.

Theyre forever waiting for something or somebody to stop Trump.

Now its local and federal prosecutors.

Or maybe its a killer takedown on a debate stage from Chris Christie or some other candidate willing to commit to a political murder-suicide. Thats a task, incidentally, that could be more difficult given that the Republican National Committee is planning to require that candidates garner 40,000 individual donors from 20 states to appear in the initial debates and isnt inclined to back down from that threshold, Im told.

Or maybe, and yes, you do hear this in private conversations all the time, Mother Nature will take its course on Trump before the election.

But hope is not a strategy.

And not only must trailing candidates be willing to submit to an intervention, but voters do, too.

As Scott wound up his speech Monday and as if to be suddenly shaken from that Kempian fever dream and thrust back to Trumpian reality I ran into Mick Mulvaney back by the press pen. The former South Carolina congressman, who was one of Trumps four chiefs of staff, cast the primary in blunt terms.

It comes down to what Republican primary voters want, said Mulvaney. If they want a knife fighter who pays porn stars, theyre gonna get it. Then, pointing his finger back toward the stage, he said of Scott: If they want that, they can get it.

Precedent and polling would indicate Republicans prefer the former, I pointed out.

Mulvaney acknowledged as much, but he was quick to point out that its early in the race.

And then, keeping hope alive, he said it was unlikely DeSantis or Scott would be charged with a bunch of crimes.

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Are the Anti-Trump GOP Forces Starting to Implode? - POLITICO