As the Chip War continues, could we see the expansion to other technologies, such as AI and Quantum Computing? The United States invests a considerable amount of dollars into R&D and is at the fringe of leading emerging technologies such as Artificial intelligence and Quantum Computing. Could the trade war on semiconductors roll over into that for other technologies?
The US and North America are home to some of the world’s biggest Quantum Computing innovators. companies such as D-wave, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Honeywell, Rigetti, and Xanadu could all be affected as the US looks to prevent China from accessing US-made innovation. With Washington trying to slow Beijing’s advanced semiconductor development and military modernisation, Biden has taken recent steps. Of course, chips are what is fundamentally being developed when it comes down to Quantum Computers. The Quantum Chips come in different flavours (Ion-trap, semiconductor, superconducting, photonic), and not all are thus silicon chips we would typically imagine, but fundamentally the technology developed by America could be used by the Chinese to jump-start their own efforts, something the US wishes to suppress.
US companies will be barred from supplying technology for chips that are more advanced than 14 nanometres or even 16nm, making the production of the more valuable semiconductor chips that are used in advanced applications, including military difficult if not impossible to produce. Aside from processors, the ban also impacts memory chips which are also needed for applications.
China and Quantum Computing
Already Chinese technology giants such as Alibaba and Baidu are busy scaling up their Quantum Computing efforts. The large companies are not the only ones, and developments have included a Quantum Operating System from Origin Quantum, which is in similar vain to the British efforts with Riverlane, who have also been developing a Quantum Operating System. Back in 2021, the Chinese had a device sporting 64 qubits.
Baidu launched its Cloud-based Quantum Computing service just over two years ago. Named Quantum Leaf in September 2020, 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 that year. Baidu has also taken a leap from the very noble ideas of the open-source community by open-sourcing their Quantum Machine Learning Toolkit.
Baidu’s Paddle Quantum was developed based on Baidu’s deep learning platform, PaddlePaddle, which has become the first and unique deep learning platform in China that supports quantum machine learning. Much like other companies such as Xanadu, Baidu’s Paddle offers researchers the ability to run QML (Quantum Machine Learning) algorithms alongside the suite of traditional quantum computing tools such as quantum chemical simulation and quantum combinatorics optimization. The purported ease of use allows users to build a simple quantum neural network or create their models following template quantum machine learning cases.
Alibaba, of course, has made its own strides in Quantum Computing with its Quantum Labs. Check out some of their efforts at their Damo Academy. The “Amazon” of the Chinese world, the company founded by school teacher Jack Ma, has almost a cult-like following in the business world. The company has interests in many areas, from payment solutions to the cloud, as you would expect for a company worth over $700 Billion.
Alibaba back in 2018 launched its cloud service subsidiary Aliyun (“Alibaba Cloud”) with Quantum Computing. The Chinese Academy of Sciences and Alibaba jointly launched an 11-qubit quantum computing service which is available to all. Much like Amazon and its web service AWS, Alibaba is a big provider of cloud services, so it makes perfect sense to expand its market into the quantum computing space. However, Quantum developments date back to 2015 when Aliyun and the Chinese Academy of Science jointly co-created the Alibaba Quantum Laboratory or AQL.
Huawei is Perhaps one of the most controversial companies (for 5G), and with the grip, the company has on many nations’ telecommunications networks (US and UK), many eyes are watching this tech giant. With a massive budget from selling in international markets, perhaps one of the more internationally focused companies, no surprise for a focus on Quantum technologies.
As with other companies, they have built a Quantum cloud offering. That quantum cloud is named the Huawei HiQ platform. The company doesn’t involve itself in creating physical quantum hardware, but it claims a full-amplitude circuit simulator on the cloud of up to 42 qubits, with software performance 5 – 10 times higher than open-source alternatives.
Tencent is Famous for its one-stop app that allows users to buy a handbag or hail a cab. The company has mentioned on its website that it is involved in building out quantum technologies. However, we have not seen the actual platform or tangible output. But the company appears to want to / or be focused on Chemistry Cloud Computing and Quantum Computing Cloud but has no mention of explicit hardware or collaborators on Quantum Computing Hardware. Horizon Quantum Computing raised $12 million in Series A funding from Tencent Holdings.
ZTE Corporation is a Chinese technology company that specializes in telecommunication. Founded in 1985, there is a fair chance you have used one of their phones. ZTE focuses on communication; therefore, it makes perfect sense to focus on security applications.
ZTE is a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, and in 2018, it announced the launch of the industry’s first quantum encryption transport solution based on an optical transport network (OTN). This solution successfully achieves shared-fibre transmission of quantum paths and traditional paths. Basically, it uses quantum encryption in its network.
What could a ban on Quantum Computing look like?
The march to explore quantum computing means it’s not just about chips, but it is about education, cloud access and IP. Quantum Computers are unlike their classical equivalent in that they are easily accessed and available on a desktop. They are still very much specialist devices that are more typically accessed via the cloud. Therefore it might be necessary to invoke certain accounts or countries that are currently accessing quantum devices via clouds on services like AWS, D-wave and many more.
Could it also mean banning Chinese researchers and students from conferences? The implications could go far and wide if Washington were to try and limit knowledge on scientific developments that go into making, for example, the Qubit devices that are at the very centre of quantum computing devices.
Military, Economics drivers or Both?
Many have stated that the ban is really about economics and slowing the might of the Chinese engine, which has traditionally piggybacked off of innovation in the west. Some might see the west as generating innovation whilst the Chinese are left to exploit the technology. China has a rapidly growing economy and services. Products are beginning to catch up with the west in a range of technologies; and consumer products. Could Washington be terrified of what China can do with its cheap labour and access to raw materials?
Could a Ban increase China’s homegrown efforts?
As we have exemplified, the Chinese are working actively on Quantum Computing. Limiting access would be difficult to enforce. The Chinese are already working on a few devices, and whilst they are nowhere near as advanced as the North Americans, they could decide that Quantum Computing is the next battleground and dedicate massive resources towards developing qubit devices and software services as well as quantum machine learning.
