Tag: Quantum Computing

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Techies team up in quantum realms and on space frontier

Combonation image of hand holding quantum chip and satellite in orbit
At left: Microsoft’s Majorana quantum chip. At right: Xplore’s Xcraft satellite. (Credits: Microsoft / Xplore)

BELLEVUE, Wash. — Quantum physics and outer space may seem as different as two tech frontiers can be, but the challenges facing Pacific Northwest ventures that are aiming to make their fortune on those frontiers are surprisingly similar.

Amid the current turbulence on the national political scene, it’s getting harder to capture the attention — and gain the support — of the federal government, which has historically been the leading funder of research and development. And that means it’s more important than ever for researchers, industry leaders and local officials to join forces.

“Think of it as a triad,” said Jason Yager, executive director of the Montana Photonics and Quantum Alliance, which is one of the beneficiaries of a $41 million Tech Hub grant awarded by the federal government a year ago. “If all of these pieces are working together, then where they meet is socio-economic growth, and then you’re ready to bring in the additional funding to launch that.”

Yager and other tech leaders from the northwest U.S. and western Canada compared notes today at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue during the Pacific Northwest Economic Region’s annual summit.

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Microsoft and Atom push ahead on the quantum frontier

Atom Computing quantum computer in server room
Atom Computing is working with Microsoft on fault-tolerant quantum computers. (Atom Computing Photo)

Microsoft and Atom Computing say they’ve reached a new milestone in their effort to build fault-tolerant quantum computers that can show an advantage over classical computers.

Microsoft says it will start delivering the computers’ quantum capabilities to customers by the end of 2025, with availability via the Azure cloud service as well as through on-premises hardware.

“Together, we are co-designing and building what we believe will be the world’s most powerful quantum machine,” Jason Zander, executive vice president at Microsoft, said in a LinkedIn posting.

Like other players in the field, Microsoft’s Azure Quantum team and Atom Computing aim to capitalize on the properties of quantum systems — where quantum bits, also known as qubits, can process multiple values simultaneously. That’s in contrast to classical systems, which typically process ones and zeros to solve algorithms.

Microsoft has been working with Colorado-based Atom Computing on hardware that uses the nuclear spin properties of neutral ytterbium atoms to run quantum calculations. One of the big challenges is to create a system that can correct the errors that turn up during the calculations due to quantum noise. The solution typically involves knitting together “physical qubits” to produce an array of “logical qubits” that can correct themselves.

In a paper posted to the ArXiv preprint server, members of the research team say they were able to connect 256 noisy neutral-atom qubits using Microsoft’s qubit-virtualization system in such a way as to produce a system with 24 logical qubits.

“This represents the highest number of entangled logical qubits on record,” study co-author Krysta Svore, vice president of advanced quantum development for Microsoft Azure Quantum, said today in a blog posting. “Entanglement of the qubits is evidenced by their error rates being significantly below the 50% threshold for entanglement.”

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Scientists turn to the cloud for computational chemistry

Illustration: Fanciful view of cloud containing molecular structures, circuitry and test tubes
Researchers are finding ways to speed up computational chemistry through cloud computing. (Illustration by Nathan Johnson / PNNL)

A team led by researchers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is finding new ways to accelerate the pace of computational chemistry, by making tools for quantum computing and AI-assisted data analysis available via the cloud.

Their effort to make supercomputer-scale resources more widely available through cloud computing could aid in the search for methods to break down toxic “forever chemicals” that are currently hard to get rid of. And that’s just one example.

The researchers describe their progress on the project — known as Transferring Exascale Computational Chemistry to Cloud Computing Environment and Emerging Hardware Technologies, or TEC4 — in a study published today in the Journal of Chemical Physics.

“This is an entirely new paradigm for scientific computing,” PNNL computational chemist Karol Kowalski, who led the cross-disciplinary effort, said in a news release. “We have shown that it’s possible to bundle software as a service with cloud computing resources. The initial proof of concept shows that cloud computing can provide a menu of options to complement and supplement high-performance computing for solving complex scientific problems.”

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How to turn down the noise in quantum computing

Quantum researchers in lab
Scientists make adjustments to a beam-line array used to deliver laser pulses in quantum computers. (Quantinuum Photo)

Microsoft and Quantinuum say they’ve demonstrated a quantum computing system that can reduce the error rate for data processing by a factor of 800.

“Today signifies a major achievement for the entire quantum ecosystem,” Jason Zander, Microsoft’s executive vice president for strategic missions and technologies, said in a blog posting about the achievement.

Quantum computing could solve certain types of problems — ranging from data encryption and system optimization to the development of new synthetic materials — on a time scale that would be unachievable using classical computers. “Scaled quantum computers would offer the ability to simulate the interactions of molecules and atoms at the quantum level beyond the reach of classical computers, unlocking solutions that can be a catalyst for positive change in our world,” Zander said.

The secret to success lies in quantum bits, or qubits, that can represent multiple values until the results of a computation are read out. Qubits typically make use of exotic materials, such as superconducting circuits, diamonds with defects or laser-cooled ions.

One big challenge is that qubits tend to be “noisy” — that is susceptible to perturbations that introduce errors. For years, researchers have been hunting for ways to maintain the fidelity of qubits and correct any errors that arise. Such strategies typically involve linking up multiple physical qubits to represent a single “logical qubit.”

Just a couple of years ago, Microsoft researchers were saying that a quantum computer would need at least a million physical qubits in order to demonstrate an advantage over classical computers. But that’s because it was thought that thousands of physical qubits would be required to produce a single logical qubit. If fewer physical qubits are required for error correction, that would make it easier to build useful quantum computers.

The newly reported demonstration addresses that challenge: Microsoft and Quantinuum said they created four highly reliable logical qubits from just 30 physical qubits. “With this system, we ran more than 14,000 individual experiments without an error,” Zander said.

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Cosmic Tech

XPRIZE contest offers $5 million for quantum applications

Cryostat at IBM quantum computing exhibit
Components for IBM’s quantum computer are on display at a conference in Switzerland. (Credit: Alan Boyle)

Twenty years after staging its first competition for technological innovations, XPRIZE is offering $5 million to expand one of today’s hottest tech frontiers: quantum computing.

The XPRIZE Quantum Applications competition is aimed at stimulating the development of quantum algorithms that can outdo classical computers when it comes to solving real-world challenges.

It’s a field that’s facing its own set of challenges — for example, the hardware systems that would make use of such algorithms are still under development. And that’s not the only uncertainty factor: Unlike the first XPRIZE, which set up clear guidelines for awarding a $10 million prize for private-sector spaceflight, the goals for the quantum competition have the trademark fuzziness of quantum mechanics.

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IonQ opens the doors to its quantum computer factory

Facade of IonQ's quantum computer factory in Bothell, Wash.
IonQ says its 100,000-square-foot Bothell factory is the first dedicated quantum computer manufacturing facility in the U.S. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

BOTHELL, Wash. — IonQ’s quantum computer factory is still ramping up to full operation, but the company is already expanding its footprint by tens of thousands of square feet.

A year ago, when IonQ revealed its plans to create a new kind of research and manufacturing facility in the Seattle area, the idea was to use roughly 65,000 square feet of space on two floors of a three-story building in Bothell that once housed offices for AT&T Wireless.

“We’re happy to announce today we’ve taken the third floor, so we have the entire building now,” IonQ CEO Peter Chapman said during a ribbon-cutting ceremony. “So, a 50% increase in our footprint in one year. … Now we’re up to about 100,000 square feet in the building.”

IonQ considers its Bothell facility to be the first dedicated quantum computer manufacturing facility in the United States. The building will house the company’s research and development team — and also serve as IonQ’s second quantum data center, following in the footsteps of its Maryland HQ.

Chapman said it cost about $20 million to upgrade the building’s infrastructure for IonQ’s purposes.

“We now have, in the Seattle area, about 80 people at IonQ,” he said. “A year ago, we had something less than that — a handful. So, we’re growing quickly in the Seattle area. And I expect that in this next year, we will invest probably somewhere close to $80 million in the Seattle area, which will go to our promise of investing a billion dollars over the next 10 years.”

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IonQ and Amazon upgrade quantum cloud services

Illustration: IonQ Forte Enterprise servers
An artist’s conception shows a data center powered by IonQ’s Forte Enterprise servers. (IonQ Illustration)

IonQ has opened up its most advanced quantum computing platform for public availability through Amazon’s cloud-based Braket Direct Program, even as the Maryland-based company gears up to produce even more advanced hardware at a Seattle-area manufacturing facility.

IonQ Forte joins two earlier generations of the company’s processing hardware, Harmony and Aria, as options for Amazon Web Service’s Braket quantum computing service. Forte has been commercially available as a standalone system for months, but offering access via the cloud is expected to widen the platform’s use.

“Braket Direct provides all customers reaching the computational limits of classical computers with access to quantum technologies needed to build expertise, and expand their research and development horizon,” Richard Moulds, general manager of Amazon Braket, said in a news release. “IonQ Forte’s addition to Braket Direct furthers the collaboration between our two companies, and paves the way for exploring new quantum applications in areas like materials research, computer vision, machine learning, pharmaceuticals and more.”

Peter Chapman, the former Amazon executive who became IonQ’s CEO in 2019, said access to Forte “is imperative for users looking to optimize algorithms for trapped ions and help expand existing applications to new problem spaces.”

“We’re pleased to continue our work with AWS as we collectively work toward making quantum accessible to all,” Chapman said.

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Fiction Science Club

How AI and quantum physics link up to consciousness

Illustration: Humanoid robot looking at screen covered with math formulas
Can AI help humans unravel the mysteries of consciousness and quantum physics? (Freshpixel Illustration via Bigstock)

Will artificial intelligence serve humanity — or will it spawn a new species of conscious digital beings with their own agenda?

It’s a question that has sparked scores of science-fiction plots, from “Colossus: The Forbin Project” in 1970, to “The Matrix” in 1999, to this year’s big-budget tale about AI vs. humans, “The Creator.”

The same question has also been lurking behind the OpenAI leadership struggle — in which CEO Sam Altman won out over the nonprofit board members who fired him a week earlier.

If you had to divide the AI community into go-fast and go-slow camps, those board members would be on the go-slow side, while Altman would favor going fast. And there have been rumblings about the possibility of a “breakthrough” at OpenAI that would set the field going very fast — potentially too fast for humanity’s good.

Is the prospect of AI becoming sentient and taking matters into its own hands something we should be worried about? That’s just one of the questions covered by veteran science writer George Musser in a newly published book titled “Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation.”

Musser interviewed AI researchers, neuroscientists, quantum physicists, neuroscientists and philosophers to get a reading on the quest to unravel one of life’s deepest mysteries: What is the nature of consciousness? And is it a uniquely human phenomenon?

His conclusion? There’s no reason why the right kind of AI couldn’t be as conscious as we are. “Almost everyone who thinks about this, in all these different fields, says if we were to replicate a neuron in silicon — if we were to create a neuromorphic computer that would have to be very, very true to the biology — yes, it would be conscious,” Musser says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast.

But should we be worried about enabling the rise of future AI overlords? On that existential question, Musser’s view runs counter to the usual sci-fi script.

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IonQ advances next generation of quantum computing

IonQ ion trap
Chip-sized ion traps are key components in IonQ’s quantum computers. (IonQ Photo / Kai Hudek)

Maryland-based IonQ is expanding the commercial availability of its next-generation Forte quantum computer — and ramping up its research and production facility in the Seattle area to work on the next, next generation.

Forte is expected to bring the quantum frontier closer to the point that customers can start running real-world applications rather than merely experimenting with quantum capabilities, said Chris Monroe, co-founder and chief scientist at IonQ.

“We’re not talking a decade away here anymore,” he told me.

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Fiction Science Club

How quantum tech could change everything everywhere

Illustration combining 1660 star atlas and picture of quantum computing hardware
Quantum computing could change our perspective on the cosmos. (Illustration: Harmonia Macrocosmica, 1660 / Microsoft, 2022)

What does quantum computing have in common with the Oscar-winning movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once”? One is a mind-blowing work of fiction, while the other is an emerging frontier in computer science — but both of them deal with rearrangements of particles in superposition that don’t match our usual view of reality.

Fortunately, theoretical physicist Michio Kaku has provided a guidebook to the real-life frontier, titled “Quantum Supremacy: How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything.”

“We’re talking about the next generation of computers that are going to replace digital computers,” Kaku says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “Today, for example, we don’t use the abacus anymore in Asia. … In the future, we’ll view digital computers like we view the abacus: old-fashioned, obsolete. This is for the garbage can. That’s how the future is going to evolve.”

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