Riverlane can now begin building DeltaFlow, an operating system for quantum computers that will eventually spread worldwide. After a recent Series A funding of $20 million, the British company can now commence its operations. It has managed to get 20% of quantum hardware manufacturers to use Deltaflow since 2020. The funding will help Riverlane expand internationally.
On January 21, French President Emmanuel Macron presented a national strategy for quantum technological development. The plan is designed to transform France’s IT and technology industries. It will last for five years and is worth €1.8 billion. France can potentially become a world leader in the quantum industry with the help of this new strategy.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), is working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to establish a Quantum Computing Applications Lab in India. This will give India’s science and technology fields a huge boost. The new lab will give quantum computing-led projects and development a boost, and there will potentially be new scientific discoveries because of this.
Origin Quantum, the Hefei-based quantum computing company, just announced that a recent Series-A fundraising round has raised more than 100 million Yuan, or $15.45 million.
Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQC) has recently announced its results after collaborating with Aker BP, one of the largest European independent companies.
The gap between early and current quantum computing architectures and practical quantum computers is wide due to being unable to achieve fault tolerance using quantum error correction reliably. A new paper aims to bridge this gap However, error correction in quantum computers is costly, especially when performing fault-tolerant logical operations on logical qubits. Logical qubits […]
In 2020, IBM was at the top of its game, successfully keeping ahead in the quantum race. The company was able to register the most patents in machine learning and quantum computing sectors. You might wonder how many patents were issued, so we will take a look at the numbers.
The name of this machine learning model comes from a combination of artist Salvador Dalí and Pixar’s beloved robot WALL·E. A truly creative name, if we dare say. DALL.E is a 12-billion parameter version of OpenAI’s GPT-3 specialising in image generation from text.
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is sponsoring 7 projects with £31 million to solve some of the unexplored mysteries in fundamental physics. Here are the projects:
Quantum physics has been revolutionary for technological development since its discovery, and a ‘second quantum revolution’ will potentially change technology in ways we cannot imagine. China and other nations are all scrambling to stay ahead in the quantum race, but there is one problem. Quantum physics, like all physics, is dominated by men, and this […]
For machine learning algorithms, parameters are the building blocks. They are an important part of the historical training data. In the language domain, sophistication generally correlates with a higher number of parameters, and this has been proven to be a reliable standard. OpenAI’s GPT-3 has 175 billion parameters, making it one of the largest language models ever trained. It can make primitive analogies, generate recipes, and even code at a basic level.
Minister-President Söder and the respective presidents of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the Ludwig Maximilian University, the MPG, and TUM jointly sign a declaration of intent.
Boehringer Ingelheim is one the first pharmaceutical company around the world to join forces with Google in quantum computing, and it announced on January 11 that it will work with Google Quantum AI to conduct research on ways to implement quantum computing in pharmaceutical research and development. There will be a focus on molecular dynamics […]
Scientists have worked to develop fault-tolerant quantum computer architectures for years. Recent times have shown that continuous variable measurement-based quantum computation on cluster states has potential. It can be used to make scalable, universal, and fault-tolerant systems if it is bolstered with Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code and error correction.
Could a domain of science that begun in earnest 100 years ago become the foundation for the future of technology? The Quantum phenomena that were observed and studied by the likes of Einstein, Planck and Heisenberg could provide the foundation for the next technological revolution.
Wall street typically looks ahead for its future investments, straining to invest in the latest technologies that might be revolutionary. But we have yet to see a first Quantum IPO – that is a pure-play quantum company brought to market. We are, however seeing large amounts of investment flowing into quantum start-ups and that those investors will expect a return.
As we see record highs and interest in the cryptocurrency marketplace, could now be a time to consider whether investing in the any of the crypto currencies is effectively safe – especially in shadow of possible attacks from Quantum Computing?
Alibaba’s DAMO Academy, the company’s global research arm, recently revealed what it believes to be the 10 predictions for trends that will shape the technology sector in 2021 and further years.
The German federal government has proposed a relief package to combat the economical crisis in Germany due to COVID-19. The package will cover future technologies. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is currently preparing to invest in Quantum communication and Quantum Computing.
A team led by Pan Jian Wei, Chen Yu Ao, and Peng Cheng Zhi from the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei has established the first integrated quantum communication network in the world. It is comprised of more than 700 optical fibres and two ground-to-satellite links, achieving quantum key distribution over 4,600 kilometres across the large country. This was reported in the Nature magazine.
Indian multinational corporation Wipro recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Tel Aviv University (TAU) in Israel. This act would bolster India-Israel relations and scientific collaboration. The MoU will focus on quantum science and technology.
Happy New Year, everyone! As we pass through the first few days of 2021, we do so with the hope of leaving COVID-19 behind. However, we should not forget that 2020 was a year full of developments and milestones in quantum computing.
The United States has Silicon Valley, the UK has Silicon Roundabout and Silicon Fen, but what about Scotland – technically part of the United Kingdom? Famous for some of the best universities around, so it should be no surprise that Quantum technologies feature heavily in the portfolio. Welcome to Quantum Glen. It’s not all Whiskey […]
Coecke was previously a Senior Scientific Advisor to CQC (Cambridge Quantum Computing) with a focus on developing and building a leading Quantum Natural Language Processing (QNLP). Prof Bob Coecke has been specialising in QNLP for a number of years and is currently at Oxford University where he as tenure in the Computer science department.
In the right conditions, scientists can fast-forward or rewind a quantum computer’s evolution just like a VHS tape or cassette. An article published by a team of theoretical physicists from the Austrian Academy of Sciences describes the process.
Quantum Computing Inc., a software platform to bridge the gap between classical and quantum computing in the industry, recently applied to the NASADQ Capital Market to list its common stock.
In December 2020, Bálint Koczor, Robert Zeier, and Steffen J. Glaser published their academic paper called Fast computation of spherical phase-space functions of quantum many-body states. The paper introduces new and faster ways to calculate these functions.
We concentrate a great deal on the US market because the United States has some of the best visibility of all the Quantum technology companies coupled with an investment friendly environment. But no one can mistake the recent announcements from China that the nation is also working hard on building out their Quantum offering. China has also announced (like Google) that it has achieved Quantum supremacy. We take a look inside some of these Chinese Quantum Companies.
As we follow the investment landscape of the quantum sector we follow the wider investment trends. We look at the stop picks of Barons and it’s companies that it has highlighted as investable in 2021. The list for 2021 again has a value angle and includes two tech companies: Apple and Alphabet.
Phew, 2020 was a roller coaster year. With Covid-19 dominating the headlines and dictating lives. But there has been an undercurrent of renewed interest in technology, in part due to accelerated changes brought on by covid, such as working from home. The technology sector has continued to accelerate its climb on the worlds markets despite early jitter as Covid-19 first emerged. Are there some trends which will drive more investors into deeper technologies such as Quantum Computing?
A while back the internet was ablaze with news of the Apple car. The secret project was being tracked because of the staff they were hiring. The project was disbanded and the car project parked. But now it appears that Apple is going to continue with their car project – perhaps a real threat to Tesla.
A team of researchers at CEA-Leti in France and the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute have made 2D arrays on a 300mm CMOS wafer to boost quantum computers.
As we close out another year and another decade, many pundits will be thinking about the next decade and what technological and science breakthroughs we can look forward to. A lot can happen in 10 years and the excitement in the speed of innovation with developments like the web, mobile and communications have many excited. Imagine 10 years in the development of the web – we went from cutesy home pages to full blown commerce. We might disagree about exactly what the future looks like, but how do you ensure you can still find work and employment in the new landscape?
It is good to hear alternatives and from all sides of the Quantum debate and for that reason we introduce you to Prof. Gil Kalai. Gil has been one of the most vocal in sounding his objections against large scale Quantum Computers or HQCA (“Huge Quantum Computational Advantage”) , akin to quantum supremacy or quantum advantage. Gil has attracted comments from luminaries of the field such as Scott Aaronson. His latest post on this this (argument against quantum computing) has been published on his blog.
In a recent Series E funding, Graphcore, maker of the Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU) specifically for artificial intelligence (AI) workloads, has announced a $222 million win. Winning this round means that the company is currently worth $2.77 billion post-money. These funds will be used to accelerate IPU silicon, systems, and software development as well as […]
As 2020 heads into its final days and we recap on the horror of the corona virus, many will have noticed the resilience of many technology companies. Despite cries from many of over-valuation and “market top” the rising trend of higher prices is leading many to look for alternative investments that could unlock massive value – and for some Quantum has that potential. We list 7 stocks that you can buy right now to add to your stock portfolio.
As Yogi Berra once said: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future”. But after a monumental tumultuous 2020, perhaps there are some trends that we can turn to as we look to the future of Quantum Computing. So here we go, here are 4 predictions or trends of 2021.
No doubt that this year has been a difficult time for many – if not just about everyone. But as the year comes to a close we have seen a massive uptick in interest in Quantum Computing, which can only be a very good thing. We’ve seen broadly a great deal more commercialism of Quantum Computing with release after release – especially into the cloud with announcements from Amazon for example of Bra Ket. So whilst 2020 has been dominated by Covid-19, Quantum Computing and its allied technologies have been a bit of a sleeper – quietly but surely improving, developing and seemingly becoming more useful.
Trimble, a company involved in transportation among many other fields, has recently collaborated with Microsoft to use Azure Quantum to solve the most complicated freight optimisation problems.
With the potential to surpass the most powerful classical supercomputers, quantum computing is a very efficient and effective way to solve problems. By harnessing the complex and nigh-magical phenomena that is quantum mechanics, these new systems are showing a lot of promise to power innovations all around the world and in many different fields. Regular computers are powered by bits, but quantum computers use their own version called a qubit, much faster than a classical bit.
One might not expect quantum computing and music industry to be spoken in the same sentence, and yet by the New Year in 2021, this will start becoming a reality.
THE British based company, Quantopticon, was founded by a number of physicists who have been developing their software suite over the past two decades. Quantillion was developed with the purpose to help researchers and designers build smarter photonics devices. As the competition for building quantum computers and Qubits heats up, scientists are looking at ways to build more effective photonic devices, faster and more cost effectively. This is where the rapid prototyping software can replace physical prototyping in the design cycle.
For the past two years, beginning in 2018, Mercedes-Benz and Google have worked together to harness quantum computing to increase the development speed of advanced battery materials and future battery systems for electric vehicles.
Quantum Physics can be hard for anyone to understand and any tools that can elucidate the difficulties of the complex quantum are welcome. We report on an amazing series of seriously cool Quantum Animations exploring a variety of physics phenomena such as the Double Split experiments, particle spin, and even entanglement.
From November 9 to 30, there were around 3,300 people from 85 countries that tried to answer a single question as they applied for one of 2,000 seats of the IBM Quantum Challenge.
Based in the United Kingdom (UK), Google’s AI unit DeepMind’s losses in 2019 have grown 1.5%, according to the latest report. The total loss from 2019 was £477 million, which is slightly worse than the £470 million loss from 2018. This was due to spending on staff and ‘related costs’. Total losses are now in the $1.6 billion territory.
A team of Caltech researchers and collaborators from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) worked with Fermilab’s researchers to establish two testbeds. Using commonly available material and cutting edge quantum devices, they were able to teleport quantum information for a sustained period, sending the information to a point 44 kilometres away. The work, which is published […]
Starting on December 9, Q2B and Quantum Realm Games hosted a quantum chess tournament, and many leading quantum computing companies sent representatives to play. The games were all live-streamed on Twitch as well. After a long and hard battle, Amazon’s Aleksander Kubica was victorious.
On December 11, photonic quantum technology company QuiX introduced the world’s largest universal quantum photonic processor to the public. The device is compatible with all photon sources available, is commercially available as well, and most importantly, is plug-and-play. A product presentation on December 11 unveiled the product for all to see.
Recently, a nanochip developed by researchers at the University of Copenhagen has been lauded as being able to possibly achieve quantum supremacy.
Originally hosted in 2019, Airbus’s Quantum Computing Challenge has finally announced the end of the competition. After the experts in engineering and flight physics of Airbus teamed up with many leading quantum computing academics and industry experts to make a decision, it was finally decided who won. The winner is Team Machine Learning Reply.
On December 10, Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQC) announced that it has developed ‘meaning-aware’ Quantum Natural Language Processing (QNLP) on a quantum computer. This proves that QNLP is fully quantum-native and will be expected to provide near-term advantages over even the fastest classical supercomputers.
After negotiations, Hyundai Motor Group acquired Boston Dynamics from SoftBank Group. The deal was worth $921 million, or slightly less than 1 trillion won. Said deal was finalised on December 10.
For many in the classical Machine Learning community the question is when Quantum Computing gets pulled into the mix to create Hybrid Learning networks that consist of both classical and quantum components. As more and more researchers are looking at this lucrative area it should come as no surprise that it is possible to combine the classical and the quantum world to potentially exploit the best of both worlds.
Phasecraft has made a breakthrough in quantum computing that will allow quantum theory to become a reality from mere research faster than ever. Dr. Ashley Montanaro led a team to develop and test new algorithms that can optimise and predict the needed quantum hardware capacity when running meaningful programs. This will let complex problem solving faster than classical supercomputers a reality.
Archer Materials Limited has just entered into a collaborative partnership with Max Kelsen, a leading company in the artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning fields. Both companies are members of IBM’s Q Network, a global network for quantum companies.
Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQC) has just successfully raised $45 million, generously given by investors such as Honeywell Ventures, IBM Ventures, JSR Corporation, Serendipity Capital, Alvarium Investments, and Talipot Holdings. This large sum will be used to make commercialising quantum computing a closer reality as well as strengthening the company’s position as a leader in quantum computing software and applications.
OpenQASM is one of the open source languages that quantum circuit designers employ. The language first emerged in 2017 and has been part of IBM’s Qiskit Quantum experience. Currently on version 2, a new version is in the works. As languages evolve new features often emerge. We’ll take a quick look at the latest incarnation.
Google is no slouch when it comes to Quantum. Being the first company around a year ago to announce that it had achieved Quantum supremacy it has steadily been improving its offering with a range of tools that are firing on every cylinder. Some of those tools include the popular language cirq and the ever […]
Q-score is Atos’ new announcement, the world’s first universal quantum metric. It is applicable to all programmable quantum processors regardless of make and origin. The new metric measures effectiveness in tackling real-life problems that classical computers cannot solve. This is in contrast to only measuring theoretical performance. Atos is committed to delivering early and concrete benefits of quantum computing through Q-score after working with others in industrial and academic partnerships for five years to develop use-cases that employ quantum computing to solve.
Recently, a newly published study has outlined several methods that colleges and universities can use when updating their curricula to help train new quantum workers that will enter the industry’s workforce. Rochester Institute of Technology Associate Professor Ben Zwickl, one of three researchers, suggested these methods after interviewing more than 20 managers working in quantum technology companies across the US.
At a recent Intel Labs virtual event, the company revealed Horse Ridge II, a second-generation cryogenic quantum control chip. This is a milestone among others in Intel’s progress to overcome one of the toughest obstacles in quantum computing, scalability. Improving upon the first-generation chip from 2019, Horse Ridge II has enhanced capabilities and allows for increased integration to control quantum systems more precisely. Some of the new features are the ability to manipulate and read qubit states, as well as controlling the potential of several gates needed to entangle more than one qubit.
According to a paper published in the journal Science, China is now in possession of a quantum computer capable of blindingly fast calculations, trillions of times faster than what the fastest supercomputers today can do. The team of scientists that developed the quantum computer worked at the University of Science and Technology of China, located in central Hefei. The computer, Jiuzhang, was able to perform 1 trillion times faster than existing supercomputers.
Recently, Q2B and Quantum Realm started a quantum chess tournament. The participants include Google, Honeywell, Zapata, and many other companies sending representatives to play the new game of quantum chess. It will last until December 8, 2 PM PST.
The Internet has been a true revolution our own life-time (certainly mine since I first started getting online in the mid 90’s). Now as new technologies such as Quantum are starting to gain traction, could we see a Quantum Internet, i.e. an Internet that uses Quantum Physics at the core as a protocol. We explore what the Quantum Internet actually means and how it could impact on the future of almost everyone.
The NEASQC project will be delving into many NISQ-compatible industrial and financial use-cases and develop now open-source NISQ programming libraries for said use cases to allow new users to experiment with quantum computing.
Here at Quantum Zeitgeist we like to cover interesting applications of Quantum Computing, including Quantum Machine Learning. Now we cover an interesting look at Quantum Natural Language Processing. Classical NLP has taken the world by storm is actively used in many products. Could Quantum Computing provide a new direction in the pursuit of richer and smarter applications and products? We find out from Prof. Coecke.
Since we covered the AWS (Amazon Web Services) service that enables quantum hardware on Amazons cloud platform (bra-ket) which employs third party hardware, it seems Amazon is keen to actually build its own quantum computing hardware. Many might argue it was only a matter of time, as Amazon has past experience of looking at trends and acting on them. It uses data heavily and mines for trends and opportunities. So if Amazon is interested in building a Quantum Computer this is good news, it has obviously seen some clear advantages of building its own devices.
We reported a while back (just a few weeks) on Xanadu’s open source blueprint for a photonic quantum computer. Recently Ish Dhand gave a talk at the Byron Bay Quantum Computing Workshop and we thought we would also share it here.
Coursera have released a new Quantum Computing course that can help learners understand Quantum Computing without the huge requirement to understand the background maths. Quantum Computing, Less Formulas – More Understanding is now available on Coursera and is narrated by Sergey Sysoev. The course is aimed at those without a background in traditional quantum mechanics.
Riverlane the Cambridge based Quantum company has been steadily working on a Quantum Operating system. In May they achieved funding of a £7.6m grant to build a Quantum Operating system and September showed the first “Hello World” moment. Now there is the public release of Deltaflow.OS.
Harvard Business School in London hosted a recent event aimed at exploring Quantum Investment. The panel included a VC who has made investments into the Quantum Space as well as people actively engaged in the field building companies and innovation in the Quantum space.
IBM have recently announced a new Open Science Prize dedicated to Quantum efforts. The award totalling $100,000 for anyone who can devise an open source system employing IBM Quantum systems that can show improvement in Quantum SWAP gates and graph states.
In a recent article published by Ivan Deutsch titled: Harnessing the Power of the Second Quantum Revolution, Ivan outlines the quantum landscape. Published in the 2nd edition of PRX QUANTUM, dedicated to Quantum Computing and technology, the work outlines and reviews the state of the current Quantum industry.
The Nokia Foundation has granted the 2020 Recognition Award to Mikko Möttönen, D.Sc. (Tech). He is a Professor of Quantum Technology at Aalto University and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The reason he won this award is due to his contributions to Finnish quantum computing research.
ETH Zurich is planning to build a highly specialised physics laboratory on the Hönggerberg campus, and a generous donation from alumnus and ETH Honorary Councillor Martin Haefner is key to taking this project even further.
DeepMind isn’t just about teaching machine intelligence how to play games. Many of the projects the company is working on have very serious and very direct applications:especially when it comes down to biology. It should come as no surprise then to many that DeepMind is often cooking up something in their AI kitchen that could directly impact the ability to solve protein structure – the so called “Protein Folding” problem which has confounded researchers and scientists for decades.
Danish quantum computing has a strong workforce focusing on quantum communication. To capitalise on this new and highly rewarding field, the Innovation Fund Denmark invested DKK 22.5 million into CryptQ. This investment will be poured into a cost-effective and telecom-compatible quantum secure communication system, and the time of completion is expected to be 3 years.
The Russian state nuclear corporation, recently launched the National Quantum Laboratory (NQL) with the goal of developing quantum computing in four years.
Nature the huge publishing group is requesting applications from spin-off companies for its new award for commercialising research. The award is open to early stage university spinoff companies from around the world.
On November 24, Xanadu, one of the world leaders in photonic quantum computing, unveiled the genesis of the Canada Quantum Network (CQN). This network was built in partnership with MaRS and Creative Destruction Lab (CDL).
As of late November 2020, The University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) has announced its new breakthrough. Through collaboration with Heidelberg University in Germany and The University of Trento in Italy, they have successfully created a new 71 site Bose–Hubbard quantum simulator. This is groundbreaking for electrodynamics, especially gauge theory.
The University of Sussex has announced that it will join the quantum race. It will make Universal Quantum it’s latest spin-out company, giving them a solid foothold in the industry. The tech company is led by quantum computing experts and native scientists Prof. Winfried Hensinger and Dr. Sebastian Weidt. Building the world’s first large-scale quantum computer is the goal in Universal Quantum’s sights.
On November 18, AlgoDynamix, leader of behavioural-based forecasting for financial markets, announced that it has new Quantum Computing capabilities. D-Wave Systems are the provider of said quantum capabilities, and this is a world-first in behavioural forecasting for financial analytics.
M Squared recently announced that it has received £32.5 million from backers to support its growth and to develop new technologies.
Quantum education is important and it is clear that becoming quantum literate is going to be somewhat akin to digital literacy. No surprise that companies and universities are investing in the nascent field with courses and programmes. The latest comes from Spain, where there is graduate Masters program in Quantum Computing Technologies.
Are we reliving the dot-com boom of the late 90’s which ended up seeing the downfall of a number of fledgling companies such as Pets.com? Out of that wreckage we saw plenty of wealth creation with companies such as Amazon and Google that have continued to innovate and provide many of the services we use today. Are we now facing the same issue of heady tech company valuations that are bleeding over into the Quantum Technology sector?
Zapata Computing Inc. today announced that it has raised $38 million in Series B funding, up to a total of $64 million. This round was led by Comcast Ventures, Pintango, and Prelude Ventures. Other Series A investors were also involved. These include BASP Venture Capital, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, and The Engine Accelerator Fund. New investors that joined for the first time are Ahren Innovation Capital, Alumni Ventures Group, Honeywell Venture Capital, ITOCHU Corporation, and Merck Global Health Innovation Fund. The investors all have faith in Zapata’s promise to bolster efforts to commercialize quantum computing. Zapata also shows how much it has progressed since last year’s Series A funding.
The German centre famous for super computing is offering its services in the quest for quantum computing. It can provide both simulation on and of qubit systems of up to 48 qubits. On service is high performance computing for simulating the real-time dynamics of quantum computers up to 48 qubits.
In big-data analysis and classification, machine learning can be of much assistance in solving complex problems. Even playing complex games like Go is a task up to machine learning standards. However, the question is, could machine learning be used to find novel protocols and new algorithms for large-scale quantum communication and other related applications?
Any real-world quantum computer faces the challenge of needing to deal with errors with large numbers of physical qubits. These errors that accumulate are resource-intensive as well as time-consuming in terms of computation. Researchers have not found an effective software method that allows for quantum circuits to be compressed significantly, reducing the demands on hardware.
Recently at a government-backed event called ‘Quantum Technology Frontier Experts and Innovations Workshop’ (approximate translation) in Beijing, we received an update from Xue Qi Kun, Head of Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences (BAQIS) and many more quantum experts. These experts shared the latest findings on Chinese quantum research and discussed the future of quantum computing. The subjects discussed were quantum state control, quantum computing and simulation, quantum networks, quantum information science, and many more.
IQM has managed to raise a total of €71 million after it recently raised €39 million in Series A funding. This will allow the superconducting quantum computer manufacturer to become a leader in European quantum computing. Within a year, this round of fundraising is the highest among all European deep-tech startups.
CERN perhaps most famous for its circular atom smasher is now aiming to help the world better understand Quantum Computing and associated technologies. CERN is famous not just for the big large underground partice accelerator but it was the home of where Sir Tim Berners Lee invented the worldwide web and created the www that came to epitomize our interaction with the internet. Now they want to help people get a jump start on the Quantum Computing field.
DISCOVERY, the largest industry-led quantum computing project in the UK, was announced by nine major organisations. It is a £10 million programme to address commercial quantum computing and what makes it unfeasible now. UK Quantum Technologies Challenge, led by UK Research and Innovation, is partially funding the programme.
ColdQuanta recently announced that $32 million was raised in Series A funding, and there will be more to come. Co-led by Global Frontier Investments and LCP Quantum Partners, they were joined by current investor Maverick Ventures and a new investor, Foundry Group. These funds will be used to develop quantum computers, quantum positioning systems, and real-time quantum signal processing.
The heated presidential election of 2020 has had citizens on edge for weeks as pundits try to predict the outcome. Now the outcome is clear or not so clear that Joe Biden has won, was ask what will happen to the Quantum Industry.
Microsoft is one of the most well known software companies on the planet that has reaches into operating systems, games (with Xbox) and even hardware. Microsoft also has numerous research centres which are focused on cutting edge computer science. As you might expect, Microsoft is working on Quantum Computing. We take a look at how Microsoft is helping people learn about the Quantum space, it’s Quantum programming language and software stack.
Xanadu, one of the hottest Canadian start-ups has published it’s Blueprint for a Scalable Photonic Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computer. The extensive publication outlines how to build a modular photonic based Quantum Computer. There are a few candidates for Qubits – ranging from Ion traps to super conducting and photonic is one such candidate that has produced enormous potential for scale-up.
This year due to covid we will be attending from the comfort of the QZ office. We went last year and were very impressed with the not only the turnout, great talks but also the attendees. We very much enjoyed. Sadly this year, no food, but will be there virtually on the 6th of November and we hope you will be too.
AI and Quantum are somewhat very good bed-fellows with much overlap with even a new area of Quantum Machine Learning. Now we learn that Nathan Benaich, co-founder and general partner of boutique VC firm Air Street Capital has been funded to the tune of $17 million from savvy investors including Twitter and Google’s head of AI.
The provincial government of Alberta recently invested $11.8 million in the University of Calgary to help it create new technology-related jobs. Alberta province stated that the funding will help establish Alberta as a Canadian national and international hub for quantum computing and other industries.
A recent journal article aims to show significant advantages of using a quantum neural networks over their classical counter parts. Neural networks and Deep Learning have been one of the most most talked about areas of Machine Learning with the potential to power applications such as personal assistants, self driving cars, translation and a whole host of potential use-cases. In this latest paper, the authors outline how quantum based networks may offer training advantages and better dimensional properties with the ability to learn faster and more effectively.
Microsoft has been historically very strong in providing programming tools and also creating frameworks for developers, so it could as no surprise that Microsoft has heavily invested in building quantum tools to aid developers in their quest of building quantum circuits especially with the language Q#.
The National Security Agency’s (NSA) Laboratory for Physical Sciences (LPS) is launching the LPS Qubit Collaboratory (LQC) in partnership with the Army Research Office (ARO).
You might have heard a lot about cloud technologies and be familiar with the offerings from a variety of vendors such as Amazon (AWS), Google (GCP) and of course Microsoft with it’s Azure service. But now there is Azure Quantum – which Microsoft is opening to early adopters.
Israel is trying to keep its status as a superior military by investing in quantum technology. Its Defence Ministry recently announced that NIS 100 million was invested in quantum computing research.
On October 29, IonQ announced that Dave Bacon and Denise Ruffner are joining its leadership team as Vice President of Software and Vice President of Business Development, respectively. Dave Bacon was from Google’s quantum engineering team while Denise Ruffner was Cambridge Quantum Computing’s previous Chief Business Officer.
On October 27, VentureIsrael launched a new capital venture fund which is directed at Israel-based technology startups. The investment strategy is aimed at technology companies with experience, flexible business strategy, and most importantly an advantage in their field.
NPL’s programme Measurement for Quantum was recently announced. It will be providing advice and measurement projects to UK quantum companies for free. Through this programme, companies can go from making prototypes in laboratories to becoming industry-ready and producing new products and services commercially.
Honeywell has generated a lot of Quantum news of late with its continued announcements of ever increasingly more powerful Quantum computers. Honeywell continues to make headlines with its progress towards bringing Quantum Computing to the masses.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is almost ready to announce the first post-quantum cryptography standard. This is after a long time of development and researching.
The US is waking up to have strategically important Quantum Computing is to the whole economy. We increasingly see governmental interest in the sector which can only be great news for the entire industry.
President Xi Jin Ping aims to strengthen China’s quantum computing industry through an aggressive strategy. If you have been reading our past articles on China, then this would be a treat for you. Around two weeks ago, President Xi Jin Ping called for increased spending in quantum technology. He addressed this one on October 16 […]
On October 27, it was revealed that the National Super-computing Centre in Shenzhen, China is planning to work on upgrading its supercomputer complex. The original report says the supercomputer will be at least 1000 times faster by 2022. It will be used in scientific, cloud computing, big data, and AI research among other subjects and fields.
The French Quantum innovator Pasqal has published the plan it has for a 200 qubit quantum computer. The 15 strong team and expanding is opening a new facility in the south of France at the Institut d’Optique. The plan is for Pasqal to achieve multi-100 qubits Quantum Simulator by the end of this year with […]
Quantum Industry Canada (QIC) is a new alliance to help forge Canada as one of the leaders in Quantum Computing. The consortium is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. The founding members of QIC include: D-Wave, 1Qbit, Xanadu, Zapata, ISARA but there are over 20 (24 to be precise) companies listed and already involved in the project.
Recently, Baidu Quantum Computing Institute Director Duan Run Yao talked about Baidu’s strategy and goals for the quantum computing market (10jqka and xinhuayuqing). From 2018, Baidu plunged itself into the quantum computing field, beginning research on quantum algorithms and quantum communications technology. So far the company is focusing on AI, cloud computing, and quantum architecture.
Sussex University is well known for its Quantum technologies. Sussex located close to Brighton is also now the home of a new Quantum Spin-out out that we have introduced before named Universal Quantum which is harnessing Trapped Ion technologies to build a Quantum Computer. We spoke to Mark Webber who works with the founders of Universal Quantum on Quantum Algorithms and how they can be applied in the real world.
As of recent times, quantum research in China is booming as a result of technological advances. In particular, quantum technologies in China are separated into two categories, one being quantum communications and the other quantum computing. These are the two main areas Chinese companies are focusing on right now.
We have always wondered when Elon Musk will get into the Quantum space. Elon, famous for Tesla and Space-X has quite a few interests that also cover solar and neural interests. However there is no sign that a Quantum Computing will emerge from Elon’s very innovative garage. We thought we’d take a look at what Elon Musk thinks about Quantum Mechanics.
The last earnings review for Intel was not kind. The sale of its memory business contributed to a massive decline of around 11% in its share price. Seemingly out-smarted by the the likes of AMD and NVIDIA, the chip maker seems to have fallen foul of Wall Street. But could the company which is the only chip maker that conducts research in Quantum Computing be one of the most under-valued ‘Quantum’ companies?
You may have heard of the term “Annealing”, but what does it mean? Equally for Gate based Quantum Computing. What do these terms means Here we illustrate and introduce the main differences and what they are used for and their typical applications.
Xanadu one of Canada’s most well known Quantum Computing company that specialized in Quantum Machine learning is opening it’s door to a Quantum Resident.
In their monthly signals report MasterCard highlight how important Quantum Computing is for the development of the business. In a recent series MasterCard show how they understand the potential of Quantum Computing.
Qiskit Metal is a toolkit designed to allow automated development and designing of quantum devices. It has a flexible interface to let users design their own devices before exporting them with a click. With Metal, complicated processes are made simpler and faster than ever.
The popular machine learning toolkit from Xanadu is now at release v0.12 which offers the following features:
New mixed-state simulator, Minimize the number of measurement settings for HW, Access the state vector from circuits, Quantum noisy channels, Preview the next-generation QNode
We talk to Libby Heaney a PhD educated Quantum scientist who has successfully transitioned into the Artworld. We talk about her work, the quantum related projects she works on as an artist and even which interpretation of Quantum Mechanics she prefers.
IBM is now offering a free quantum computing course called ‘Qubit by Qubit’s Introduction to Quantum Computing’ in association with the Coding School. Open to high school students and even working professionals, there will be space for 5000 learners for free. Priority will be given to high school students applying, however.
On the 7th October 2020, the White House in the United States released a report, named Quantum Frontiers: Report on Community Input to the Nation’s Strategy for Quantum Information Science. In it, there are eight identified frontiers that have problems impeding progress. As a result, the American government sought advice and help from the quantum community, and this report describes some solutions to these problems.
Zapata Computing has recently been making headlines with new access to its Orquestra service and availability across a number of platforms. Recently Zapata also re-shuffled its scientific advisory board to include notable figures in the Quantum Community. We ask Zapata about the changes happening and also about the future of Quantum Computing.
Both Biden and Trump are running for the presidency in 2020, and this battle for the throne, in Trump’s case for the second term, is rather intense. Both candidates promised to increase funding in scientific ventures including quantum computing. The question is, between Biden and Trump, who is the better choice for Quantum Computing research in the United States?
A new Quantum prize has been announced for contributions to open source in the Quantum space to celebrate the life and work of Peter Wittek who went missing last year whilst trekking in the Himalayas. Peter Wittek was heavily involved with the Canadian Quantum scene and in Quantum Machine Learning.
Nu Quantum, a quantum photonics company, managed to raise £2.1 million in seed funding when Amadeus Capital Partners led an investment round. Four other companies, Ahren Innovation Capital, IQ Capital, Cambridge Enterprise, and Martlet Capital, also invested in Nu Quantum following the latter’s pre-seed investment round last September. Seraphim Capital is a newcomer to investing […]
The NExt ApplicationS of Quantum Computing (NEASQC) project in France will bring together a large group of experts from different industries and fields. These include experts in quantum computing, high-performance computing, AI, chemistry, and energy management. NEASQC intends to show that while completely fault-tolerant quantum computing with millions of qubits is still not available today, there remain practical uses for the NISQ (Noisy Intermediate- Scale Quantum) systems that will be available soon. NISQ computing has some advantages when running select applications, which can bring significant benefits to users such as those in industries.
We featured Kitty Young a while back who is working at Microsoft (Quantum) and is an artist and also known for her highly creative work in helping learners understand Quantum Computing and Quantum Physics. The courses that she gave on Quantum Computing in her Comic Book series have now been made into a physical Book. We got one of the first copies and we review her highly original book.
As the race for Quantum Computing heats-up, Germany often seems suspiciously quiet from the perspective of the rest of the world. Historically Germany was one of the leaders of the Quantum revolution that began in the 1920’s and one hundred years later it is making use of its heavy research and industrial might to ensure that it remains core to the development of the Quantum industry.
Aaron Young is a researcher at the University of Colorado in the Kaufman group where he looks “under the hood” of quantum physics aiming to understand how nature can be exploited to build technological innovation the Quantum Computing space.
Honeywell recently achieved a Quantum Volume of 128 with its quantum computer during late September of 2020. In the race for Quantum computing dominance we see another announcement by a Quantum Computing player – Honeywell.
Neural architecture search, or NAS, is to search for the best-performing neural networks automatically using computers. Recent advances in the methods used in NAS have made building faster, more compact, and power-saving problem-specific networks possible.
IQM recently revealed their new breakthrough. Its new high-speed nanoscale radiation detector is now on par with the most powerful quantum computer readers available. The research for the detector was carried out at Aalto University and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland by many of IQM’s present employees.
The quantum revolution is on its way. Whilst researchers are still finding the killer applications that take Quantum Computing into prime time that hasn’t stopped developers learning the basis of Quantum Computing and how to program qubits in a range of devices and simulators that come from the Likes of IBM, Microsoft and Google plus lesser known start-ups such as CQC (Cambridge Quantum Computing) and Xanadu.
Today, IonQ, a leader in quantum computing, revealed their next-gen quantum computer system featuring thirty-two (32) perfect qubits with low gate errors, placing the quantum volume expected to be greater than four million (4,000,000). In the “quantum race” we are seeing company after company announce ground breaking achievements in Quantum Volume.
Today, BT and Toshiba Europe Limited announced the first industrial quantum-secure network in the UK. It transmits between the National Composites Centre (NCC), the world-leading composite research and development facility in the UK, and the Centre for Modelling & Simulation (CFMS), a pioneer in new digital engineering capabilities and a not-for-profit organisation.
Zapata announced a few days ago that Rigetti quantum hardware is now accessible to Orquestra users through Amazon Braket. While Zapata has been accessing Rigetti’s QVM simulator and users of Orquestra can leverage Forest and pyQuil, it is the debut of this function and feature.
In August, The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that members of the National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee (NQIAC) will counsel the Administration on how to continue having Americans lead in quantum information science.
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John Martinis was Google’s former head quantum scientist, allowing the dominant company to achieve quantum supremacy before recently joining Silicon Quantum Computing, an Australian startup, validating its approach to quantum technology.
Recently, Microsoft called for an intermediate representation for quantum programs, called QIR (Quantum Intermediate Representation), which work as common interfaces between different programming languages for gate-based quantum computing and target quantum computation programs.
The leader in quantum computing systems, software, and other services, D-Wave Systems Inc. just announced that its next-gen quantum computing platform will be available to the general public. Sporting improved hardware, software, and tools, it can speed up and deliver much more accurate results when running in-production quantum computing applications.
Menten AI, the US based drug design company presented at the latest D-wave sponsored event Qubits2020. They explain how they use Quantum Computing to design therapeutic peptides. The company outline how difficult it is to explore the existing space of proteins that even nature hasn’t had a chance to explore.
XtalPi, an AI drug discovery and development technology company, announced yesterday that they have received an oversubscribed Series C funding from SoftBank Vision Fund 2, PICC Capital, and Morningside.
Qiskit hosted a course this past summer, which saw over 4000 students from more than 100 countries registering to attend the same quantum computing courses taught to IBM Quantum interns. Now, Qiskit is planning to offer the same course to anyone who wants to get their feet wet in the world of quantum computing and […]
Volkswagen built an algorithm built on AWS that used QPU’s from D-wave. The project was called Quantum Shuttle and was done at last years 2019 WebSummit conference in Lisbon. This was the first time a real-time service utilized a quantum processor. Here VW talk about using Quantum Computing to optimize the painting of their vehicles. […]
In a move from Austin powers where Dr Evil ransoms the earth for a million dollars and later changes to 100 billion, one minute might not seem a lot. But using a D-wave can bring plenty of benefits for solving optimization problems in just a few milliseconds, so in theory there is a enough time to try out the Leap and Ocean tools from D-wave.
Last year, UCD and IBM Research Europe in Ireland worked together to hold the Quantum Technologies Colloquium, and this year they hosted the 2020 Quantum Computing Hackathon together. This virtual event had the use of the open source software network Qiskit as its main course. IBM developed Qiskit to write code for quantum computers, which […]
The Canadian Quantum start-up/scale up launched its Qubits2020 conference to further the development of Quantum Annealing and the use of its Quantum Computers. The annual conference is open to registrants and is free. So if you want to learn more about what D-wave is up to and what its machines are being user for.
One of the first killer applications of quantum computing is optimization. No surprise that smart minds are looking at the intersection of Quantum and Finance. We spoke with Chicago Quantum who are driving innovation in Quantum Finance, by using the latest advances in Quantum technology to optimize stock portfolios.
Last week Baidu held a developer conference in which it showcased Quantum Leaf, a new cloud quantum computing platform for programming, simulating, and running quantum workloads. Baidu says that Quantum Leaf is meant to provide a programming environment for quantum-infrastructure-as-a-service setups. It is also meant to work in tandem with Paddle Quantum, the development toolkit Baidu released earlier this year.
Across different industries, there are always complex optimisation problems to be encountered, including routing vehicles, managing supply chains, assessing risks, optimising portfolios, operating power grids, and more. Even with numerous complicated algorithms developed to efficiently handle select problems, a lot of real-world optimisation problems are still difficult to optimise. This is despite many advancements in […]
Zapata, a Boston-based quantum computing startup, announced its commercial release of Orquestra. It is an advanced software platform used to create repeatable quantum and quantum-based workflows.
Quantum Zeitgeist was at the 4th annual QTEC conference where quantum based and allied companies pitch for investment. We collected a few of these Quantum companies seeking investment for their quantum technologies.
Recently we have seen the likes of Lemonade, Unity, JFrog and Snowflake float. Despite the Covid-19 crisis, tech seems relatively immune to the pandemic virus which has gripped the world and the economy. But as we spend more time at home, technology has been one of the least affected sectors of the economy. But when […]
IBM Quantum’s grand project During 2020’s summer season, the U.S. saw numerous protests against systematic racism and police brutality against Black Americans. These protests were nationwide and marked a critical point for American racial and social justice. Such protests also had the effect of reminding tech companies and other industries to do more in providing […]
In another poll from QZ, we ask the community what technology is likely to be the most promising. Out of a range of possibilities, the audience chose super conducting technology as the qubit technology that is likely to be most promising. Here are the results in full: Super Conducting Qubits 50% Ion Trap Qubits 25% […]
A quantum photonics start-up based in the UK, AegiG has secured 1.4 million pounds from Innovate UK, a government agency that funds and supports business innovation and is a part of UK Research and Innovation. It will start exploring secure quantum communications for both fibre-optic- and satellite-based platforms. Joining a worldwide-spanning pilot project, AegiQ will […]
If God were to play dice, he would play Quantum Dice! Today we focus on one company with a seemingly strange remit: that is to make numbers more random. For the uninitiated this doesn’t sound a huge problem until you realize that it is very difficult to make truly random numbers and much of modern security depends on truly random numbers. One start-up tackling this area is the Oxford Company named Quantum Dice.
One of the applications of Quantum technology and perhaps one of the earliest use cases is the Quantum Random Number Generator which could be instrumental in keeping our security systems secure. The new application delivered on IBM Q services will enable true random numbers.
At QuantumZeitgeist we enjoy looking under the hood of start-up’s and companies doing very innovate things in the quantum space. We talk to the founders of MemComputing (MemCPU) which offers a new paradigm of computing which moves away from von Neumann architecture, about their technology, what they are working on and where they are headed.
QZ attended the latest QTEC investor showcase which highlights the latest in investment pitches from putative and current Quantum start-ups. We heart pitches from companies such as CDT (Sumitomo) to FlouretiQ to KETS.
Currently the qubit count stands at 65, but next year a new chip named Eagle (Quantum chips are codenamed after birds) with 127 Qubits, then in 2022 Osprey with 433 Qubits, followed by Condor with 1,121 Qubits.
Recently NVIDIA agreed to acquire ARM for around $40bn making the combined company a formidable force in the world of classical computing which will now include CPU’s as well as GPU’s. Right now NVIDIA is not involved in the Quantum space, but we think that might well change in the future as the whole area of Quantum Machine Learning heats up. Now the UK will benefit from a new Artificial Intelligence research centre.
If the tensions between the US are China are already inflamed, the recent news that China has built a much more powerful quantum computer is likely to cause much consternation. But it could lead to more investment flowing into US science and technology as Trump wants to see US at the forefront of the race for Quantum Dominance.
Noise and errors are some of the major problems that plague the field of quantum computing. There should be no surprise then that research teams around the globe are looking at ways to reduce noise and come up with clever schemes to deal with errors that take place during computing. Now a team at IBM have come up with a new methodology that enables a Quantum Computer to better compensate for errors.
Two very hot fields right now. Combine recent accelerated trends in the automotive sector caused by cvoid-19, self driving, electrification and couple that to Quantum Computing. McKinsey the management consultants have written an article on how Quantum Computing is impacting not only cars but the whole industry from manufacture to efficient routing of vehicles.
Two leading Quantum technology companies have joined forces wirh a global partnership to further their continued development of quantum computing technology. Q-CTRL which specializes in utilizing control systems and Quantum Machines, which develops a Quantum Orchestration platform to work across multiple qubit technologies.
I’ve been itching to get to this place since I first visited when it wasn’t even called a museum and was a collection of a few volunteers in the same space as the Bletchley Park museum and was called “retro beep”. In fact I had hoped to go as Bletchley park re-opened but alas I had to wait another month or so until 8th of September 2020 until the NMoC opened again.
We get to talk to Saesun Kim who is a researcher at the University of Oklahoma. We get to ask Saesun Kim about his work and where Quantum computing is headed, but importantly we get an inside look at the research that goes on in fundamental physics – eminently useful for Quantum Computing.
In another of our fun polls, in taking the zeitgeist of the quantum sector, we posed the follow question about which company is the most investment worthy out of four companies: IBM, Intel, Google and Honeywell.
In a one-up against the might of super conducting qubits. Xanadu has launched their cloud accessible photonic quantum cloud computing platform. Eight and twelve qubits are currently available but soon 24 qubits are expected to come online, giving existing platforms a run for their money. The heat is on!
One of the most well-funded Quantum Computing companies will lead a £10 million consortium to accelerate the commercialisation of quantum computing in the United Kingdom. The aim is to create, build a quantum computer for the UK and have this accessible via the cloud.
Go to any conference on Quantum and take a straw poll about which interpretation of Quantum Mechanics the audience prefers and you’ll likely find the Many Worlds interpretation beats out many of the even well accepted conventions such as the Copenhagen interpretation, or even Bohmian Mechanics or QBism. We review the latest book from Sean Carroll exploring the nature of our Quantum reality and excitingly explores Many Worlds.
Last year and earlier this year we reported on the development of Riverlane’s Quantum Operating system named DeltaFlow.OS and it’s funding of 7.6m (GBP). The operating system is the key to getting better performance and capacity from quantum hardware. Now Riverlane have announced that the operating system has now reached a point of maturity where it could be used.
We chatted to the team at Quantum Mads, a quantum computing start-up aimed squarely at the finance sector. The growing team is proving commercial focused finance services using the latest quantum computing developers. Introducing….Quantum mads!
The votes show that t|ket won our vote as being the most popular language framework for programming quantum computers. Followed by Qiskit. Surprisingly Q# and Cirq are not as popular as we expected. There are plenty of resources on Qiskit and is supported by IBM, Q# supported by Microsoft and Cirq is supported by Google.
In the growing quest for applications of Quantum Computing, Google have shown how to simulate a chemical system with 54 qubits. The largest chemical simulation performed to date on a Quantum Computer. The team used a Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) to simulate a chemical system employing the Hartree-Fock approximation.
Following off the back of the announcement of massive funding into Quantum sciences and information. One of the recipients of a new Quantum Institute is the Fermi Lab. The new institute is named Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center (SQMS) and will have as its key industry partner Rigetti, who have been commercializing super conducting quantum qubits.
After the major announcement of massive funding from the white house into AI and Quantum, new institutes are being set-up with the aim of furthering research and collaboration with industry partners. One institute at the Argonne National Laboratory named Q-Next will work with Intel on building research capabilities out in a number of key areas.
The Whitehouse today has announced that it will fund 12 new institutes with a massive funding splurge to ensure that the US remains competitive in artificial intelligence and quantum computing. In the next 5 years, one billion dollars (US$) is earmarked for the two sectors which are taking the world by storm, with AI perhaps the most visible. But importantly Quantum Science has been recognised as an industry of the future.
The results are in. We had some fun collecting data from out latest survey on what Quantum computing platform is most popular. Out of the four possible providers, it turns out that the IBM Q was the favorite provider.
Recent announcement in quantum computing progress are using a metric known as Quantum Volume, not simply the number of qubits. The more complex metric is perhaps not as obvious and not as headline grabbing. But what does it actually mean? Both Honeywell and IBM are using Quantum Volume despite IBM inventing the term.
We rarely write about Intel and its quantum computing efforts. The company which has dominated much of the classical computing landscape remains rather quiet about their quantum computing effort. But Intel is one of the only chip makers out there who actually is involved in building Quantum Hardware.
We are having some fun by asking our readers to vote for their favorite Quantum Cloud platform. There is only once day left to vote, so please go on over to the twitter account, vote and follow us too please.
In a move reminiscent of the computer processor industry and Moore’s law, IBM has announced that it has doubled the performance of its quantum systems from 32 to 64. The measure is Quantum Volume, which doesn’t just take into account the number of qubits but the fidelity of connected nature of those qubits. IBM achieved a quantum volume of 64 on a system with 27 qubits.
The processor company famous for producing processors to rival Intel in today’s market has gathered increasing demands for it’s product as people are stuck inside under lock-downs and restrictions across the globe to prevent the spread of Covid-19. As the world desperately seeks more computational clout, could AMD also go into Quantum? Why don’t more […]
The new proposal released on Friday sanctions a spending increase of around 30% in the non-defense budget for artificial intelligence and quantum information science, which will include Quantum Computing. Recently there has been renewed interest in the competitive threats from China and the news realizes an effort to ensure the US remains competitive in emerging technologies.
The team at Google have recently published a paper: “Single-Photon Image Classification” describing how applying a quantum transformation can improve the accuracy of determining MNIST (digits) or MNIST (fashion) with just a single photon. In the toy model, the team show that for the quantum setup, an improvement in accuracy up to almost 41.27% for MNIST is achievable, almost double the classical set-up accuracy of 21.27%.
As the summer hits us, the traditional holiday on the beach might not happen due to corona (covid 19). But that should not stop you from enjoying some great reads over the summer. We put together a small reading list for those interested in Quantum Computing but don’t know where to start.
Not even one year ago Amazon launched its quantum computing cloud service. The service named Braket. No that is not a typo. Braket is named after the notation that quantum scientists used: Bra’s and Ket’s. But the name will likely just be called “bracket” in terms of pronunciation, we suspect. Now Amazon is making Amazon Braket open for General Release.
Predicting the future is hard. Really hard. Just look at science fiction movie classics such as Back to the Future. Imagining what the future can bring is a tricky task that very few have been able to attain. Sure we can often get the trends right, but it is often the most disruptive breakthroughs that change everything. Think Lasers, Microprocessors – almost unimaginable in the 1950’s. But are we now in the 1950’s of Quantum Computing?
More mature markets such as the United States have a big technology and chip sector which lends itself readily into morphing into Quantum Computing, The ability to design and manufacture semiconductor chips can be employed in the quest for building arrays of Qubits (quantum bits). But what about the United Kingdom? How can invest in the UK’s growing Quantum Computing sector?
A recent paper published in Nature Physics has highlighted progress in dealing with noise in quantum systems. Noise represents one of the biggest barriers to effective and practical quantum computing as the qubit count increases. The team from Sydney show a new protocol for dealing with a 14-qubit super conducting system. The work allows a correlation matrix ro be constructed highlighting interactions between qubits that has not previously been detected.
As the excitement in Quantum computing and allied technologies hots up, more dedicated funding is looking at the sector. An early stave investment fund from the UK is looking to invest up to £12 million for Quantum companies based in the United Kingdom.
Last week, IBM’s global summer school ended successfully. It was well attended with over 5000 participating over the world and 2000+ people were watching at the same time, and a huge discord channel was created for the purpose. It was more like a conference with lots of excitement and fascination with a new rising technology: The […]
Sadly the world still runs on carbon and despite the need to reduce it, or eliminate it completely there are still plenty of gas guzzlers on the road. The question is whether any optimization could help the environment without going full electric. Microsoft, Toyota and Jij worked on using Quantum algorithms to efficiently help traffic flow around the streets of Japan.
A new fund from the technology transfer experts at IP Group is taking aim at the Quantum sector with £12 million up for grabs. The new fund aims to stimulate investment and innovation in the growing UK sector. The funds are of course backed by the highly adept team who are behind the funding of one of the worlds most promising DNA sequencing company: Oxford Nano Pore.
Back in December 2019, Amazon Web Services (The cloud arm of the retail tech giant) announced an important partnership with Caltech to establish the AWS Center for Quantum Computing which is due to open in spring 2021.
From Qubit to Shor: Experiments Quantum Computing at IBM Qiskit Global Summer School 2020
Many of the announcement of ground breaking quantum computing technology are seemingly emerging from US based companies such as Google, Amazon etc and unlisted companies. However there are other countries that are also investing in the Quantum space – some of these are in China.
Investing in emerging technologies like Quantum Computing doesn’t have to be the preserve of institutional investors. Many technology companies are investing in Quantum Computing and this provides an entry point for many retail investors to get involved in the Quantum area.
The home of the computer is a place that often gets overlooked. In the United Kingdom during the war, a mathematician and logician named Alan Turing and a whole host of other individuals (Bill Tutte, Tommy Flowers and countless more) were responsible for breaking the WW2 Nazi codes on the site of an mansion house: Bletchley Park. The byproduct of this effort was the computer has become ubiquitous. We visited after lock-down to see where the beginning of modern history began.
There is a lot of hype around quantum computing. Some are erroneously touting that Quantum Computing can speed up all our lives and make encryption insecure. Separating fact from fiction is key to understanding what QC can and cannot do for your business. Here we outline some of the key take-away messages from Quantum Computing.
Rigetti, Berkeley, CA is one of the most well funded Quantum start-ups out there in the Quantum landscape. In fact, due its growing size it may actually qualify as a scale-up. The latest investment tranche sees a placement of $79 million possibly bringing its capitalization to over $1 Billion – a potential tech unicorn.
As the interest in Quantum Computing, Quantum cryptography and the Quantum Internet grows, don’t be fooled into thinking that the breakthroughs we are seeing will always happen in western nations. The Chinese are coming and they are also working on Quantum technologies. We’ll highlight five of the largest technology companies in China that have an interest in Quantum Computing and technology.
TikTok has taken the social media world by storm. The network enables people to send short movie clips to each other. The dedicated site service appears to have caught some of the existing players off guard. But more importantly than what it does is where it does it… China. The Chinese owned company has created headlines with President Trump threatening to ban the service in the United States. However what about the competitive threat in the Quantum Computing arena from China?
Investment isn’t just the preserve of Wall Street. The main in the street “Main Street” can easily invest in Quantum computing without the special instruments used by Wall Street financiers. Many public companies are investing and building Quantum Computing technologies. Here we outline how anyone can invest in Quantum Computing without access to Wall Street.
Unless you have been living in a cave, you must have heard of quantum computing, the field that is set to overturn the world as we know it – or is it? For sure there is a great deal of quantum hype in the field. But what should you tune into and how might Quantum developments impact your business. We highlight some thinking around Quantum Computing with the aim to shine light on developments which could mean Quantum Computing is more disruptive than the Internet.
The last few months have not been kind to Intel, which is a giant of the computer processor world with competition from the likes NVIDIA, AMD Micron and ARM. In fact it may purchase ARM. No doubt being a chip maker is competitive business. However when it comes to Quantum Computing, there is only one mainstream manufacturer investing in research into Quantum Technologies: Intel.
Qiskit, the guys and gals behind the very popular quantum computing language have just completed their first two week Qiskit summer school. The popular programme was over subscribed as students scrambled for limited lab space, although the course was open to pretty much all. The programme introduced quantum computing, qubits, quantum physics and how to build quantum circuits.
The company that brought the world the first quantum cloud has teamed up with the Japanese to bring quantum computing to the academic and commercial sphere in Japan with the aim to deepen ties.
The development by researchers at Microsoft and ETH-Zurich has the potential to impact global climate change by finding efficient catalysts for carbon fixation which reduces CO2 by turning into products which are more useful (such as methanol).
The field of Quantum Computing is still searching for killer applications. Despite a number of promising applications such as Shor’s algorithm, Grover and HHL, Quantum Computing has not made a material impact on sectors such as medicine. The founder of Sydney startup Q-CTRL states that Quantum Computing could deliver new tools for drug development which could help in the event of any future pandemics.
Investing in technology might seem a no-brainier with ever growing share prices of technology stocks such as amazon and google. But what about investing in emergent technology such as quantum computing and allied technologies. We illustrate some easy ways to get traction in the quantum computing space and invest in what may turn out to be one of the most important industries of the future.
The buzz around quantum computing continues and quantum computing could inspire a whole new generation of engineers, scientists, programmers building the technology of the future. We outline some courses that can help you lean the fundamentals and the background to quantum computing.
I grew up in the twilight time between home computers and PC’s or more specifically IBM compatible PCs. The early nineties were a mix of playing with primitive machines like the BBC micro, spectrum machines and the Commodore 64. But it was the IBM PC that really set me on the journey into computing, science and much more. Here was a proper business machine that could be used at home for everything from spreadsheets to games to word-processing to developing read world applications.
The popular quantum programming language named Qiskit is likely to have a lot more users after the 2020 Qiskit summer school, which aims to teach students and anyone for that matter the basics of quantum computing and how to use the programming language to build circuits to execute quantum algorithms.
Quantum Computers could become more mainstream then previously thought possible. New investment into QC takes off with ORCA computing raising £2.9m in their seed round to develop photonic based Quantum Computers. “Light contained within optical fibers is also an excellent carrier of quantum information but so-far several challenges have prevented optical fiber playing a role […]
A recent initiative from Hackaday is making quantum computing accessible. Hackaday is running a Quantum Computing allowing students to learn about the fundamentals of quantum computing. To learn more about the project you can go to the web page and understand how Kitty (from Microsoft) is transforming quantum education with her amazing quantum comics. Kitty […]
There is a new look at the qiskit website. The popular open-source quantum programming framework supported by IBM sports a new look. Right now in the quantum space, there is a battle for platform dominance. Qiskit is undoubtedly one of the most well used languages despite being only three years old.
David Bohm was one of the most famous quantum scientists that you might not of heard of. His work on non-locality, interconnectedness and consciousness has intrigued many over the years. Now there is great movie about the Quantum physicist exploring the relation between quantum physics and consciousness.
A trend we are seeing is that increasingly more and more financial organizations are looking at exploring quantum computing. Companies such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan already have teams exploring quantum algorithms. Standard Charted is the latest to join the quest for financial use cases with quantum algorithms.
Personal computing had a history in the home-brew clubs of schools and universities. That bedroom mentality is hard to recreate when you need expensive equipment, refrigerators and industrial lab equipment. But could an initiative from Noah Woods change all that with a plan to create an open source quantum computing project?
Just like classical programming languages such as C++, Python, JavaScript or even the ancient but still useful FORTRAN there are reasons to select one language over another. For example FORTRAN can still run pretty fast but lacks the ease of use and the libraries of Python which can be slower. But what about in the Quantum space, what language is appropriate? Here we’ll highlight languages that are suitable for almost anyone to get into Quantum programming.
Yesterday saw China’s pure-play quantum computing company float on the Shanghai market, with shares increasing to almost ten times their initial value in a single day. The tenfold increase makes QuantumCTek’s $4.2bn market cap 110 times its sales for last year, and 600 times its net income.
Quantum companies are not just the preserve of Silicon Valley, with many regions creating technologies and services in the quantum space. Regions from Toronto to Texas are seeing quantum computing companies emerge. We’ll highlight five companies from the United Kingdom that aim to shake-up the Quantum Computing space.
As we have been saying at QZ for a long time, Banking and Finance will be one of the first major use cases of Quantum Computing. Coupled with the funds and the need to explore any advantages, banks are looking at Quantum Computing with interest. The latest piece from the times explores how RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) is working with Quantum Computing company 1Qbit.
When we saw what the WEF did with interactive strategic intelligence tool we had to share it. Clicking on a subject or theme you can drill down and explore a range of subjects and how they interact. The tool allows you Post-Quantum Computing, Security, Practical Applications for Quantum Computing, Quantum Computing Theory, Quantum Computer Design and Quantum Computer Memory.
We like to surface new learning materials and we came across Microsoft’s very business focused AI/Machine Learning portal which helps understand the importance of using AI in a variety of sectors from Retail to education. Each pathway of learning is tailored to a specific theme. There are learning paths for Financial Services, Healthcare, Retail, Manufacturing, Government and Education.
Being stuck in because of covid could a great time to brush up on the latest in machine and quantum machine learning. The summer school is hosted by Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, Germany. You can find a summary of what talks are available virtually and online.
In line with the events and the growing interest in Quantum Computing and allied technology a new journal launches soon aimed at quantum information science and technology with an impact of lasting and profound impact.
The AWS centre Quantum Computing founded last year (2019) well see one of the famous names in Quantum Computing join it as a scholar. John Preskill announced the position on his twitter feed.
Rahko a British Quantum Start-up is concentrated on building the capability to model the behaviour of drugs and chemical reactions, and design advanced materials with greater speed and accuracy than what is currently possible, at reduced cost. The company was entered with IQM, Oxford Quantum Circuits and Phasecraft for the Europas Award 2020. Rahko states […]
The WEF (World Economic Forum) has issued a piece asking for the community to take seriously the implications of Quantum Computing. This is because quantum computing has the potential to break the systemically important cryptographic underpinnings of the infrastructure on which enterprises and the wider digital economy rely. In addition the community must also ensure that security doesn’t itself become a barrier to the progress and development of quantum computing.
We have written about quantum computing as an investment possibility and the public companies that are investing and building research and development in Quantum Computing. Companies such as Microsoft and IBM are heavily invested and for many this is the only way to invest in the Quantum sector. However there is another way – the QTUM fund which puts together many companies allied to quantum computing into one fund. We looked at the performance of the fund over the last year.
The Singapore based company, Horizon Quantum Computing has announced funding of its seed round led by Sequoia Capital India.
Over the weekend (Saturday) was the live screening about the work and implications of David Bohms work. David attempted to better explain Quantum physics and the introduced concepts such as Hidden variables and Quantum potentials in his effort to better explain quantum physics.
At QZ we always get excited when we see a new framework or programming language. A team of researchers at have created a new high level language which aims to make programming quantum computers more intuitive resulting in more efficient gate usage – well that that is the aim of Silq, which is a new high-level programming language for quantum computing with a strong static type system, developed at ETH Zürich.
Honeywell the industrial giant has created a quantum computer with a quantum volume of 64 which is twice as powerful as the next most powerful quantum computer.
Just out today the list from MIT of 35 innovators under the age of 35. The lis contains Zlatko Minev from IBM who is showing that quantum physics isn’t quite as unpredictable as first thought. His experiments may be used to enhance quantum error correct leading to the ability to use fewer qubits or deploy more qubits successfully.
So far it has been quite a week for Ion Trapped devices. We have seen Universal Quantum on the south coast of the UK (Brighton) get their initial funding to pioneer ion trapped qubits. We have also seen the Pennylane platform from Xanadu integrate AQT’s ion trapped hardware. Now we see massive funding (16th June 2020) into IonQ.
The quantum machine learning platform from Xanadu: Pennylane will now support Ion trapped qubits provided from AQT. Xanadu has its own photonic systems but adding AQT’s hardware to the line-up will provide alternative hardware for users.
The surge of interest in the field over the last few years signals that we at the point where quantum computing is now “a thing”. Students are asking to study computing computing and whether there are any undergraduate degrees. High-school students can attend summer schools on QC. Popular online learning platforms are hosting QC courses. Major name (and some less well known) tech companies are building Quantum Computers.
The UK has announced that it was support the quantum computing industry in the United Kingdom with 70 million in funding ranging over 38 projects. The Science Minister Amanda Solloway has today announced the projects which will help the UK be a leader in the Quantum Computing Revolution.
The finish company IQM has obtained a grant for €2.5M and investment of up to €15M. The EIC awarded the funds to IQM and long with other sources IQM has recieved around $30M in funding so-far. The EIC is the European EIC Accelerator program which provides funding to start-ups that fit its criteria (IQM received its maximum grant).
Showing the geographical diversity of some of the Quantum companies around. The south coast of England see its very own Quantum Company raise $4.5m for its quantum computing effort to build large scale quantum computing.
The director of IBM’s Research group stated that a Quantum App store is coming soon. Rather like the Apple app store or the Google play store or even itunes. Could getting access to quantum computing algorithms and compute really be as easy as one click?
The sheer number of resources emerging for learners to engage in understanding quantum computing continues to grow. Now initiatives such as QuBes Camp aims at high school students.
The The Global Consciousnesses Project or GCP for short is a project that aims to explore how humans consciousness can interact in a measurable way. You’d be forgiven for thinking this sounds all a little kooky, but this is a research project undertaken at Princeton University over the last two decades.
At QZ we love to showcase new Quantum learning material. CQC’s new video series aims to introduce quantum computing to more people.
We attended the 2020 CogX conference virtually. Last year we were there in person, however this year we showed up only virtually. Bernard Marr is an influential writer on trends, we summarise what he talked about.
One of the hottest jobs around at the moment is a Data Science. As the world has gone data crazy, some of the most coveted jobs are Data Science & Machine Learning and has attracted high salaries. MIT physicists have come up with a solution to prepare students with the necessary skills for the next technological revolution: teach them quantum computing.
You may have heard of David Bohm. Pilot wave anyone? His view of Quantum Mechanics is one of the lesser considered but is certainly extremely interesting. Now there is a FREE documentary about this giant of quantum physics.
The origins of Quantum Computing date back a few years, starting with Richard Feynman and David Deutsch. The latter was the first to show there was a quantum algorithm advantage possible. That is that some algorithms could be run faster using quantum mechanical principles than existing classical computers. That doesn’t apply to all algorithms but in principle it works. Later algorithms emerging from the likes of Peter Shor and Lov Grover have shown that Quantum Computers may be able to factorize numbers much faster and searching can be done faster than conventional algorithms.
Julia is one the most up and coming languages that data scientists are raving about. It has a lot of features that data scientists love and has some built in functions that can handle quantum “stuff” with ease such as linear algebra. Now JuliaAcademy has made its Julia courses available for free!
The weekend saw history made as Elon Musk’s company SpaceX put men into space – the first private manned flight – ever. The astronauts are on their was to the ISS (International Space Station) and as history continues to be made, it got us wondering about the Technological and Business accomplishments made by Elon and what the future holds for him. In fact now could be the time to start his own Quantum Computing company as we see massive technological developments in the field.
Clustering has proved to be an important concept in classical machine learning, in the process a series of data is clustered, usually according to some measure of distance which corresponds to how close data points are to each other. The data points could be anything, such as people where a point in space is represented as an N dimensional feature, for example hair color, eye color, age,… etc. Points which are closer together are more alike. The algorithm allows for separation into a number of predefined clusters K.
Quantum can be an over-used term. Here at QZ it applied chiefly to the field of quantum science which is an established science with repeatable observations. Sure it is a theory but that doesn’t mean anything can get a Quantum label as some product makers think. Buzz terms are all part of the marketing patter […]
Baidu, perhaps best known for its search engine – in some ways is the google of china. As the world wakes up to the prospect of near term quantum computing, many of the worlds technology giants, IBM, Amazon, Microsoft and Google are working to incorporate quantum computing into their offering.
In addition to our reviews on Quantum Computing that include Quantum Books, we also read a lot of science and Business books. As we see so many Quantum Start-ups enter the field, we thought we would include some of our best business books that we have enjoyed that you many also like and gain value from – even if you are not creating your own Quantum Business Venture.
Keen not to become technological laggards the Chinese are not holding back when it comes to investing in Quantum technology. Tencent Holdings, the Chinese technology giant has $70 billion ear-marked for investment in everything from cloud to IOT and of course Quantum Computing. Perhaps best known for its WeChat messaging app, Tencent is looking to expand its range of appeal and products, particularly as consumer growth is muted.
For those that love narration from one of the true masters of the English language: Stephen Fry. We stumbled upon this YouTube video of Stephen walking through some of the concepts of Quantum Computing.
Alice & Bob have finally gotten together, formed a Quantum Computing start-up and completed their first fundraising round for $3.3m.
Quantum Computers and Quantum Computing are making headlines these days with what seem like breakthroughs and major accomplishments? But how do you separate fact from fiction and get a better handle of what Quantum Computers actually are and what they are not.
We’ll start at the beginning and show the Quantum analog of the some of the typical algorithms. Starting with the perhaps one of the most simple but useful algorithms: The Dot Product. We’ll refresh the classical version before introducing the the Quantum Equivalent.
We interviewed Kitty Yeung who is Senior Program Manager at Microsoft. Kitty is a physicist and an artist and has created some of the best Quantum Learning materials we have ever seen. We interviewed Kitty and you can see that interview here. But in this article we just wanted to show off her amazing skills in Quantum Education and her Quantum Series.
Kitty Yeung PhD is responsible for some of the coolest Quantum Educational materials we have ever seen. Her comic book style format for learning about Qubits, Quantum gates and Quantum algorithms is insanely popular. We talk to her about her path to being SPM at Microsoft and how she has managed to combine her love of science, her artistry and flair for education.
Quantum Computing in many ways is reminiscent of the rise of Classical computers from room filled with noisy hot equipment to the Quantum World which also is typically rooms full of photonic equipment and lasers or cold chillers for the ultra low temperature devices. We thought we’d look at some of the past predictions and projections about the future of technology.
One of the founders of the Agile manifesto shares his views on Quantum Computing. Bear in mind this is four years back and a lot has happened since then. Predictions are hard, but we do wonder whether in the light of Google’s quantum supremacy statement in 2019 and other Qubit developments, he has changed his mind.
Quantum Trapped Ion startup IonQ is already working with Amazon and is part of their AWS service and the founder Peter Chapman gave an interview to Venture Beat. So if you want to learn what the future of AI and Machine Learning may look like then pop on over to VB to read the interview.
Microsoft is one of the larger technology companies that has invested heavily in Quantum technologies by developing it’s technologies for both hardware and software tooling and language too (Q#). It is now taking Quantum to the cloud by bringing it to its popular Azure platform. Amazon is one Microsoft’s main competitors in the cloud computing and now cloud quantum computing space.
Solving The IBM Quantum Challenge In this post I’ll try to introduced the IBM Quantum Challenge and how I managed to finish it. It’s better if you have a machine learning background. otherwise, the quantum computing part can be addressed using the resources inside the post On May 4, 2016, IBM has introduced the first […]
The company that was the fist on the planet to sell quantum computers has a new webinar aimed at beginners on how to program a Quantum Computer from End to End.
The history of the valley is a mystery to some, but the accepted beginnings come from the silicon chip industry earning it the silicon moniker, but it actually began a while before that with its origins in the military establishment and institutions such as Stanford that encouraged would-be entrepreneurs to found their own businesses.
It had to happen. Finally there is a quantum device that the consumer can buy. OK, its not a quantum computer but it will employ some of the technology that has been developed over the last few years. The tie up with SK Telecom (South Korea Telecom) will see Samsung launch a Galaxy version of their smart phone that employs Quantum security. SK Telecom has been working on Quantum Encryption for a number of years, but this is the first time that consumers can buy a smart-phone with Quantum Encryption.
Ten Physicists who transformed our understanding of Reality – written by Rhodri Evans and Brian Clegg – (10 Physicists) introduces the life and achievement of 10 world famous Physicists chapter by chapter. A short, simple and concise, and this book is easily read even who doesn’t have a good knowledge of science.
The Quantum Inspire Platform from Tu Delft. Works a multitude of hardware. Program, execute and examine your quantum algorithms and requires no registration if you want a quick start.
In the quest for usable Quantum Computers, a consortium of UK based Quantum Computing developers has been awarded almost eight million pounds (£7.6M or $9.3M) from the British governments Industrial Challenge Strategy Fund.
The US military agency DARPA has a program to exploit NISQ based Quantum devices. Seven university and industry teams for the first phase of the Optimization with Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum devices (ONISQ) program have been selected.
For IBM’s celebration of their 4th birthday of their Quantum Experience, they created a Quantum Challenge over four days. May Quantum researchers and enthusiasts joined in and earned their certificates.
The Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT) is launching a project to build Finland’s first quantum computer. The beginning phase of this three-phase project is seeking to improve Finland’s ability to design and build quantum computers, and to create an ecosystem and user base for future applications.
IBM has stated it now has 18 Quantum Computers online and functioning. In the last four years IBM has been actively rolling out its Quantum Experience offering which enables anyone anywhere to use its Quantum Computers via the cloud. But how many quantum computers is enough? Will Quantum Computers become so ubiquitous that everyone almost everyone on the planet will eventually own one, just like the computers we have today.
The British start-up, Oxford Quantum Circuits has been recognised as an innovator by the panel and is under consideration of the Hottest Quantum start-up. You can go and vote here. They are competing with Phasecraft, Rahko and IQM.
Unfortunately some have developed a fear of maths and fear of science – especially physics. Sometimes this is literally just down to the way its taught. To better understand the field of Quantum Computing, you might want to also have a look at understanding quantum mechanics – the foundation on which it is all built. We will look one book which is a great introduction to Quantum Mechanics. The book is written by the legendary Leonard Susskind who is professor of Theoretical physics at Stanford University.
For those who like to stay on top of their frameworks, there is a new release of the open source Google backed quantum framework of cirq which takes the current version to 0.8.
Sure there is Wikipedia, but we thought we’d delve a bit more into the one person who might be described as the father of Quantum Computing. Lets be clear David Deutsch is not the first to come up with or originate (Richard Feynman can likely take that credit) the idea of Quantum Computing, but he […]
On the south coast of England, Brighton – famous for it’s shingle beach and its Victorian Pier nestles a Quantum Start-up spun out of the work at the University of Sussex, led by Prof Winfried Hensinger named Universal Quantum. The company which is less then two years old aims to exploit Quantum developments to build […]
It is only coming up to four years ago that IBM enabled users to run their Quantum Experiments in the cloud. How things move so quickly. Xanadu a quantum start-up celebrates the second anniversary of its quantum platform named Penny Lane. Over the last few years Penny Lane has proved to be one of the […]
As IBM reaches it’s fourth birthday of Quantum Experience, it has decided to create a Quantum Challenge to get more people interested in Quantum Computing. As any parent knows those early years are crucial and IBM is no longer a toddler. The four-day worldwide initiative commemorates the fourth anniversary of quantum on the cloud.
Pasqal works on building Quantum computing hardware and was founded in 2019 to exploit the technology developed by the Institute of Options in France. It’s technology uses large 2D arrays of neutral atoms to form its qubits. Pasqal’s latest announcement states its intention to work with the cirq quantum computing framework which is open-source but backed by one of the largest players in Quantum Computing: Google.
Tradeteq, an electronic trading platform and Singapore Management University (SMU) have announced that they are working on a project to apply Quantum machine learning in their approach for credit scoring. Supported by the Monetary Authority of Singapore the aim is to build a machine learning model with a Quantum computer that gives better accuracy for credit scores.
QuantFi, one of our recent Quantum Start-ups of the day has been accepted to join the CAP (Crédit Agricole Paris) start-up accelerator in based in Paris. The company joins five others but is the only Quantum based deep-tech company in the programme.
Published by MIT press and relatively inexpensive for a textbook coming in at just under $30 the book by Rieffel and Polak is a fully fledged Quantum Computing textbook. It might not be as common or as popular as Mike and Ike (The Quantum Bible) but I think it represents extremely good value for money for those wanting a little more detail but not so much detail it is over-whelming.
The software landscape is opening up in the Quantum Computing world. Zapata has announced that it is opening its Orquestra service for users. The aim of Orquestra is to be agnostic across the entire software and hardware stack and that means it can work with a number of tools and variety of computing hardware.
John Martinis who was the head of Google’s Hardware from 2014 until recently oversaw the company make headlines with its quantum supremacy breakthrough and notable development of Quantum chips such as Sycamore.
Is there a better way to learn the intricacies of quantum computing rather than examples involving Alice and Bob? In getting to grips with the fundamentals of the Quantum world is important to really understand the mechanisms behind the operation. Open any textbook on Quantum Computing and you’ll see Alice & Bob examples used to […]
The American motor manufacturer was one of the historic leaders of technology and now is exploring how Quantum Computers might help customers with congestion.
One of the business areas that we see exploring the benefits of Quantum Computing is Finance. The Spanish banking giant CaixaBank has now developed a credit risk classification model utilising quantum computing.
The key to using quantum computers is their purported ability to compute certain algorithms faster than classical computers. However there are only a hand-full of algorithms which appear to show speed-up: For example, Grover or Shor’s algorithms. Researchers are not resting there and are actively looking to see whether other algorithms are amenable to Quantum Speed-up.
One of the best sci-fi series in a long time now airing on Hulu involves a Quantum Computer in a mysterious box which simulates events. For some viewers it might be the first time they hear terms like qubits or multiverse. So here is a short guide to Quantum terms you might encounter which give you a short summary.
If you haven’t been following, Devs a Californian silicon valley based drama series on Hulu has captivated millions with its science fiction theme and mention of Quantum computing. For many this might be the first time that they have heard of quantum computing. Without going into the accuracy of the series, you can be sure of one thing. That is that it will create even more interest in Quantum Computing.
The Quantum Cloud is much like the computing cloud that we all typically know about and use (often unknowingly). Services such as AWS (amazon web services) are cloud services which means that companies such as QuantumZeitgeist do not need to run on rack of our own physical hardware. Making sense in today’s technological climate, the NSF is making funds available for those wanting to use Cloud Quantum Computing as a service with the aim of enhancing certain key areas.
The Aussie researchers at UNSW University of New South Wales have come up with Quantum Computing qubits that operate at much higher temperatures than existing technologies used by the likes of IBM and Google. Granted they are still pretty cold, but the new qubits could be step forward to room temperature devices.
Since I first read a New Kind of Science from Stephen Wolfram, about a way of using elementary rules to build ever more complex outcomes I was captivated. However beyond some interesting patterns and nice pictures, there was no real way to use the developments in a day-to-day use. Stephen Wolfram has now published new work showing how simple network mappings could represent fundamental physics.
Google’s own dedicated Quantum Team has shown how it can run quantum chemistry calculations or more specifically Hartree Fock calculations on NISQ (Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum) Superconducting Quantum Hardware. One of the many purported applications of near term Quantum Computing is in materials and chemistry simulations so it is no surprise that many researchers around the […]
The acronym D.A.R.Q you may not have heard of – but since last year the term has started to gain traction. First coined by Accenture in their 2019 report, it stands for the following: Distributed ledgers, AI, extended Reality and Quantum Computing. Many consultancies such as McKinsey and Accenture are focused on ensuring that their clients remain competitive in the face of rapidly emergent technologies. More and more organisations are starting to think about Quantum Computing seriously and the new framework from Accenture whole-heatedly embraces Quantum as one of the technologies underpinning the future.
OK, its not quantum related, but as we are stuck at home on lock-down, we are looking for fun things to break up block of time. Our friends who develop games over at castalidesinteractive.com have created a fun COVID-19 themed game.
You may have seen past articles featuring a Quantum Computing Game which is being produced from folk at the University of Durham amongst other Quantum Computing luminaries. The aim of the game is to create a learning environment that makes learning and really getting to grips with Quantum Computing possible in a fun and accessible manner. Well now that game is seeking funding that means anyone can play a role in helping the Quantum field as well as sharing in the success of the game.
Scientists at the University of California, Riverside; MIT and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology have observed evidence of Majorana fermions. These are particles theorised to also be their own antiparticle. Discovered to exist on the surface of a common metal: gold. This is the first sighting of Majorana fermions on a platform that can potentially be scaled up. The importance lies in their ability to be used to construct quantum bits or qubits.
One of the worlds most notable mathematicians unfortunately died from Corona virus on the 11th April 2020. John H. Conway was a giant in the field who introduced a whole generation to a new way to create and simulate using cellular automation in 1970. Incredibly influential and inspired many after him such as Stephen Wolfram to develop his ideas further. John did not stop there and contributed more to the field then we can do justice here – as he worked on so many fields including Geometry and Game theory.
ColdQuanta has announced that us has been awarded a contract of up to $7.4M from the US government agency DARPA for its work on early quantum computers. The DARPA grant is part of the ONISQ programme (Optimization with Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum devices) which aims to develop reliable quatum computers that can scale to hundredns and […]
The Canadian based company named 1QBit is now approved by regulators to deploy its AI tool for scanning chest X-rays for Covid-19. Clearance for the xrAI chest radiology tool was expedited due to growing concerns over the course of the Corona virus (Covid-19) and regulators around the globe are under pressure to approve possible treatments or technologies that might offer patient advantage.
Is it important or necessary teach children the basics of Quantum Computing? As more children are spending time at home and out of the classroom, parents are taking a closer look at their children’s education. Coupled with possible massive changes in the global economy wrought by the corona virus, parents are understandably nervous about their children’s future.
The ventures arm of Merck pharmaceuticals have made a placement of $5m into Quantum Computing startup Seeqc Inc. The startup has raised over $11m including that from from M Ventures (the ventues arm of Merck).
Bored on the corona virus lock-down? We found some of Brewdog’s beer in our office. How on earth did that happen? One of the beers (or stouts) that we were all keen to try was the Paradox Grain Schrodinger’s Stout from Brewdog Brewery. Attracted by the name and the fact I love a good dark […]
The RAND organisation writes in their latest report about Quantum Computing some future case studies of QC being used to hack peoples personal details and financial records. Security 2040 discusses the security implications of Quantum Computing. The report explores the risks of quantum-computing alongside the work that could prevent loss of private data.
Corona is forcing us all to work from home and that means conferences are somewhat of an issue. But never fear, the latest Quantum developments are coming over the wire from QCTIP2020 via zoom and slack.
There was a recent article (in the British Daily Newspaper The Telegraph) about fledgling Quantum Start-ups in the UK (United Kingdom) asking the government to help out their industry which has been hit and likely to be hit further by the ensuing Corona Virus crisis.
You might be locked down but you are not locked up. You can go to plenty of places in your mind and learn many new skills, subjects and areas. All without leaving your home. So instead of feeling limited, why not learn the spooky science behind Quantum Computing?
When we purchased this book one of the very first things we noticed was its price. Published by Springer and also hardback, the books retails for a little over 25 bucks! The book therefore presents an inexpensive way to understand Quantum Computing as the applied moniker says – less about the theory and more about the practical applications.
One of the leaders in Quantum Computing, IBM and its IBM Q division has announced a collaboration with the National University of Singapore (NUS). The three year collaboration is aimed at using Quantum Computing to solve real-world issues. This marks the first collaboration of its kind in South East Asia.
Besides the obvious name. QuantFi, delves into the less than obvious and straightforward world of Finance. Followers of the progress of the Quantum Industry will have observed that one of the nascent industries in the near term likely to benefit from Quantum Algorithms is that of finance. Therefore it should come as no surprise to […]
We have numerous companies offer services for free to help tackle the corona virus problem. Now Canada’s Quantum Computing company named D-wave has got in on the act and opened its doors to anyone working on the COVID-19 problem. This initiative comes in response to a request from the Canadian government for solutions to the […]
As more and more conferences are shuttered, many organisers are turning to creating virtual conferences rather then cancel completely. The latest conference to be made accessible by the virtues of the internet is the Quantum Computing Theory in Practice conference scheduled for early April in Cambridge. Sadly we were due to go, but we will […]
There are few companies founded today with their co-founders name. Obvious companies are Ford, Dyson, HP, however most start-ups use a name not associated with their founders. Rigetti founded in 2013 by Chad Rigetti was always going to be different. In 2017 MIT Technology Review named the company one of the fifty smartest companies and appears […]
Scott Aaronson is a legend amongst the Quantum Computing luminaries. Known for his no-bulls**t approach to talking about Quantum Computing, Scott is one of the brightest minds actively researching the field and his focus is often on the question as to whether Quantum Computing can actually give a computational speed-up. That is not to say the Scott is sceptical – he simply wants to put Quantum Computing on a firm footing.
Splunk (the listed company) is best known for its searching capability to interrogate data from a variety of sources such as machine generated logs but that could be applied to virtually anything. Splunk has joined forces with Quantum Computing Inc. in an effort to turn it’s attention to fledgling Quantum Inspired software. Quantum Computing Inc […]
As there are many computer language frameworks out there in the wild, there are also many languages used for controlling quantum computing and there are new ones popping up all the time. Fundamentally controlling qubits via gates is the name of the game and right now there are many competing frameworks (some supported from the […]
As we are all stuck at home due to the virus, there is at least some benefit – and that is that we can listen and enjoy more YouTube channels and content on Quantum Computing without distraction. Qiskit is a programming framework that is opensource and supported by IBM. They have their channel on YouTube […]
Ploughing through a textbook is never fun at the best of times. But as Quantum computing becomes more widespread there are at least some easier ways to learn about Quantum Computing with online courses.
Predictions for the Future This is less about Quantum Computing than many articles that we usually write at QZ. Some of the changes we are undergoing now are likely to affect many aspects of our life including research, development and commercialisation of Quantum Computing. Of course nothing is happening in a vacuum and deeply interconnected […]
The 2020 Call for Code Global Challenge is now focused on two areas. Covid-19 and the Climate Crisis. You can be sure a lot of people will be looking at this topic and IBM has to be applauded for including this monumental task in the 2020 challenge. This year’s challenge is focused both on COVID-19 […]
For whatever reason – if you happen to be staying in because of the virus, you might be looking for things to do, things to learn and things to listen to. If you want to delve a bit deeper in Quantum Computing you can learn from a variety of sources including courses, books (Quantum Computing) […]
In this climate when the whole world is focused on the Corona Virus, it’s great to hear some positive news related to the Quantum industry and especially funding – which in this climate could be very difficult. So the news that the Tel-Aviz company Quantum Machines achieved $17.5M for its series A investment is especially good news.
First off, I must admit I do not like the name. It sounds a little naff, rather contrived and a bit “out there”. Anyhow I ploughed on regardless and bought the relatively inexpensive book on Amazon. The book is over 400 pages and retails for less than 50$ which is relatively cheap compared to many texts in the quantum space.
Even if you are hiding out in your bunker somewhere in New Zealand to hide from the Corona virus you cannot fail to notice the widespread financial impact of the virus – especially in Europe which is though to be ahead of the curve in terms of severity, compared to North America. Around the world equities (stocks) are falling as people take notice of the fallout that is occurring to countries around the globe which seems as if there is no end in sight.
We look at the top publicly traded stocks of technology companies that are actively working on Quantum Technologies. Not just using it or performing consultancy but are actually building the infrastructure behind Quantum Computing. We select 4 companies to compare with a technology benchmark. Previously an article was published on public companies that are involved […]
Many of us are worrying about contagion of the literal viral type. Unless you have been holidaying on another planet, you cannot have failed to see that every news outlet is running headline news daily about the Corona Virus and its implications for us all. But what of the financial cost, especially to the nascent […]
With self imposed and now some forced quarantines around the globe (Lombardy in Italy for example), you might be facing more time at home away from the office. Aside from serial watching the news and the panic (justified or not) what can you do to make the most of your time?
Learning about how quantum computers work and their algorithms doesn’t have to be difficult and expensive. There are plenty of great books written on the subject that range from popular to science to extensive text books costing hundreds of dollars.
There is now a really easy way to get into Quantum Computing and Quantum Programming. Strangeworks have made a real effort with their new platform in making it easy and simply to use, intuitive with all the functionality that you need. If you want an outline of the new service currently in beta with Strangeworks, look at a previous article on the Strangeworks Community Platform.
Strangeworks (we love that name) is one of the growing number of companies focused on providing quantum solutions. Founded by Whurley (William Hurley), Strangeworks is quantum company that likes to take a different approach – especially to it’s interface and user experience. Strangeworks also made our Quantum Company of the day a few weeks ago. […]
You’d be forgiven for not knowing much about Honeywell (NYSE: HON). It’s name is synonymous in our family for the thermostatic controls it makes. I don’t think I’ve ever bought a Honeywell product in my life, however my plumber has on my behalf. Anyway, we listed last year an article on public companies that are working on Quantum Computing, and Honeywell is one of those companies.
If you don’t already know Microsoft has been working on Quantum Computing with it’s topological approach to the qubit and it’s new language Q# designed specifically for Quantum programming. Whilst Microsoft doesn’t have the hardware available in the cloud for you to run Quantum programs on, it is doing its bit to educate the world […]
Quantum Computing has been getting a lot of press and here at QZ we aim to track the interesting news and developments. However news of a possible widespread pandemic caused by COVID-19 is creating headlines around the globe with fear and panic seeping into the worlds economies and stock markets.
MIT have got a great podcast, so we thought we would share it. For those who need a little intro – Google achieved something they claim is Quantum Supremacy – that is the ability to perform a computation faster on a Quantum Computer compared to a classical machine (like the machine you are reading this on).
D-wave just launched their Quantum Computing application suite and opened to users with free application or Quantum run-time meaning that anyone can literally get exposure on their Quantum Computing platform. here we take a first look at the suite.
Unless you have been sleeping you will have likely heard of the Quantum Computing Company D-wave and their Quantum Annealing computer – which works a little bit differently to gate based Quantum Computers such as IBM and Google. One of the first to commercialise quantum computing technology D-wave have steadily been increasing their Qubit count […]
If you have not heard about the Quantum Internet, it might sound like science fiction, but the Quantum Internet is getting a little closer to a working reality. Scientists from around the world have steadily been increasing the distance at which typically photons can be entangled. Recently there was a similar announcement from Chinese Scientists.
Quantum computing requires quite a lot of maths and background to understand some of the processes and concepts involved. There are plenty of great textbooks and material out there, even a few online courses. But if you simply don’t have the time to get stuck into this material, we have curated some great material from around the web to help you understand Quantum Computing.
We have seen an announcement from Intel sometime back last year regarding their cryogenic control chip, but details were rather scant. The partnership between Intel and QuTech (Delft University of Technology) has resulted in a chip that enables easier control and scaling of qubits, which could help researchers in their quest to improve the number of addressable qubits that can be used in Quantum Computing.
We’re waiting for the first company named QOL (A variation on AOL) and for them to send us a CD (Compact Disc) through the mail! For those who are too young or weren’t even around at the time, many of us accessed the internet through a dial up modem with tiny download speeds which are […]
Has Monday rolled around again and you really feel you should be doing more in your working life? One of the secrets of successful people is that they keep learning and growing in new fields and areas. Nothing, especially in the technology space stays the same forever. Technologies get outmoded and out of date pretty quickly. Just go back a few years and there was “Big Data” everywhere. Now this phrase embarrassingly crops up from time to time, but was rightly considered a buzz word or phrase.
Did you know that the Germans had their own father of modern computing? Konrad Zuse built the world’s first programmable computer; the functional program-controlled Turing-complete Z3. Surprised? How is Germany faring when it comes to Quantum Computing and Quantum Technologies – aside from history, where are they now?
We’ve not heard much from India regarding quantum computing and there are no quantum computing start-ups in comparison to a few in china as well as research pushes from Chinese universities. India appears to have been languishing until now.
Arguably it was google that set the Quantum Computing world ablaze with their 2019 announcement that had achieved quantum supremacy. Even though the announcement had garnered a lot of controversy, it did signal to the world that Quantum Computing is a now firmly on the map and a target for many tech companies.
The Jetsons! Remember the futuristic TV series where everything was supposed to be better? Or did you know that in 1957 the Ford Motor company actually built a nuclear powered concept car called the Nucleon. What happened to the explosion (excuse the pun) of interest in nuclear power (especially fusion) that was supposed to be a panacea for the world’s energy needs.
The Nucleon passenger car was to run from nuclear fission in place of a gasoline. But the car never entered mainstream production. Could the Quantum Computing field be in the equivalent of the 1950’s when it comes to Nuclear power? All the hallmarks are there, enormous promise, untested technology and the science hasn’t caught up with fantasy or desire. Will useable functioning Quantum Computers turn out to be always 50 years away?
Quantum Computing is everywhere these days in the media, with articles appearing in print from established publications such as Forbes and the FT. Many agencies and governments around the world are asking the question about how best they can encourage the public to learn and understand Quantum technologies which seems to be quickly appearing on […]
The race towards Quantum Literacy Quantum computing is expected to have far-reaching benefits as well as potential security concerns for a wide range of industries in coming years. At present, there is little understanding of, or expertise in, the skills required for effective quantum computational reasoning outside specialists in physics and mathematics. Quarks Interactive, a […]
You may not have heard of Julia the language. But I’m pretty sure you have heard of python. In this article we’ll explore some of the syntax behind the Julia language and why it might be an interesting alternative to commonly used languages such as python used in data science and in quantum information and […]
Looking around at language development and you’d be forgiven for thinking that just about everything can be programmed in the python programming language. In some ways this is peak python. In the last 20 years alone (python is older) python has gone from what I would describe as a scripting language to a fully fledged […]
We at QuantumZeitgeist love our origination stories of the names of the companies we are profiling. Today brings us another creatively named business “Multiverse Computing”, which for many is a nod to David Deutsch, who is one of the progenitors of the Multiverse (literally multiple universes). What does Multiverse Do? Multiverse provides hyper-efficient software for […]
The name Zapata reminds us of Frank Zappa. Simply just can’t break that association. For those who don’t already know Frank Zappa, he was one of the most creative non-conforming musicians, who could play just about any musical instrument. We’ll see that perhaps this universal ability to interface with any “hardware” is proving to be quite important in the Quantum Computing space, much like Frank Zappa, able to pick up a guitar or drum sticks.
One of the granddaddy’s in the dedicated Quantum Computing space, QC Ware was way back founded in 2014, which is quite an aeon at the current pace of quantum technology. Back in 2014, there was no IBM Q Experience cloud service (with just 5 qubits), however QCWare was already on the scene with its Quantum Computing consulting. Started by founders Matt Johnson, Randall Correll and KJ Sham and has noted advisors (Chief Scientific Advisor) such as Scott Aaronson who is very well known in Quantum Computing space.
The Quantum Company started by (William Hurley) Whurley always makes me smile every-time I hear the name, in part because it sounds slightly odd, but is such a clever portmanteaux I’m rather annoyed that I didn’t think of it myself. Even StrangeWorks founder’s name is a conjoined word (Whurley) from his first and second name and even makes sense too.
Today’s Quantum company is based in the United Kingdom, Cambridge in fact. Riverlane sprung onto the QC scene just a few of years ago, founded by Steve Brierley who was most recently a research fellow at the University of Cambridge with over a decade of experience in Quantum Computing. A little bit smaller then some […]
IBM Quantum technology as Quantum Company of the day from Quantum Zeitgeist.
Each day we will cover one company involved in the Quantum Computing revolution. We’ll aim to cover some of the points that are not covered elsewhere in the press and with our focus on the business aspects of Quantum Computing. Today, January 9 2020 we cover the Canadian start-up called Xanadu – so we are […]
You might have heard about the nascent advances in quantum computing with the likes of Google achieving “Quantum Supremacy” back in 2019. So far the financial gurus of Wall Street have not been apparently paying that much attention. Or have they?
We are now in the roaring twenties as some commentators have mentioned referencing the nineteen twenties, and that could be good or bad – after all the 1920’s was quite a turbulent period, ending with the 1929 Stock market crash. But what will quantum scientific developments bring for the development of the quantum computing field and other nascent areas such as Quantum Machine Learning (which you may have heard of), as Machine Learning is everywhere.
Want to learn more about Quantum Computing but don’t know where to start? If you want to learn more about Quantum Computing but feel daunted by the apparent huge amount of science, math, computer science and even physics to learn, we decided we would pick the best of the resources we could find online and […]
Who is Peter Wittek? Firstly the introduction about Peter Wittek. He is an Assistant Professor from Toronto (University of Toronto) and for the last few years he has been actively engaged in the field of “Quantum Machine Learning”. You might have heard of “Quantum and Computing” and “Machine Learning”, but not the amalgam term of […]
The most exciting weekend ever for those in the Quantum Computing space as a report was published stating that Google had achieved quantum supremacy. Basically supremacy means: Quantum supremacy is the potential ability of a quantum computer to solve problems that classical computers practically cannot. Wikipedia That potentially we are on the cusp on the next biggest […]
Unless you’ve been sleeping you must have heard about QC or quantum computing which threatens to overturn the world as we know it, impacting everything from the internet to Cryptography. But how do you get involved and play a part in this nascent revolution. The way to invest in Quantum Computing Perhaps the easiest way […]
Here is a list of all the Quantum Computing Companies that we track here at Quantum Zeitgeist. We have profiles on each of the below companies. Here is the list of Quantum Computing Companies around the globe (134 Companies). 1QBit A* Quantum Accenture Airbus Group Alibaba Group Alpine Quantum Technologies Gmbh Ankh.1 Anyon Systems Inc […]
