Tag: Quantum Computing

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Washington state’s quantum industry gets a roadmap

Quantum cryostat at Microsoft
This cryostat creates ultra-cold temperatures for quantum experiments. (Microsoft Photo / John Brecher)

A newly issued report says Washington state provides one of America’s best settings for expanding the frontiers of quantum information science — but those frontiers are so strange and new that it’s hard to get a handle on their potential.

The technology landscape report, titled “Quantum Information Sciences in Washington State,” was prepared by analysts at Moonbeam for the Washington Technology Industry Association’s Advanced Technology Cluster — and issued by the WTIA in conjunction with this week’s Northwest Quantum Nexus Summit at the University of Washington.

Formed in 2019, the Northwest Quantum Nexus’ membership shows why the region is well-suited to play a leading role in the quantum revolution.

NQN’s partners include Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, which have both rolled out cloud-based quantum computing platforms; Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which is working on a range of quantum applications for national security purposes; and premier research institutions including UW and Washington State University.

“This report validates our thesis that Washington state has the right mix of organizations and capabilities — ranging from startups to legacy enterprises — to ensure Washington becomes a global leader in both quantum adoption and commercialization,” WTIA’s CEO, Michael Schutzler, said in a news release.

But the report also says the state’s tech ventures aren’t taking full advantage of homegrown talent.

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Amazon and Boeing join Northwest’s quantum team

UW's Xinxin Tang and IonQ's Peter Chapman at Northwest Quantum Nexus Summit
IonQ CEO Peter Chapman shows off a quantum chip as University of Washington researcher Xinxin Tang looks on. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

It’s been almost four years since Pacific Northwest leaders in the field of quantum computing gathered in Seattle for the first Northwest Quantum Nexus Summit, and since then, the scientific buzz over quantum has only gotten buzzier. So what’s next for the Nexus? A star-studded second summit.

Amazon Web Services and Boeing are joining this week’s gathering at the University of Washington, and nearly 300 academic, business and government representatives have signed up to attend. Some of the companies showing up at the second summit — such as the Seattle startup Moonbeam Exchange — didn’t even exist when the first summit took place in March 2019.

Over the past four years, UW has received about $45 million in federal funding to support research into quantum information science. Quantum computing has gotten fresh boosts from Congress and the Biden administration. The Pacific Northwest’s two cloud computing powerhouses, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, have both rolled out hybrid quantum platforms. And just last week, Maryland-based IonQ announced that it’s setting up a research and manufacturing facility for quantum computers in Bothell, a Seattle suburb.

Microsoft, UW and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory got the ball rolling for the Northwest Quantum Nexus in 2019. IonQ, Washington State University and the University of Oregon’s Center for Optical, Molecular and Quantum Science joined the team a couple of years later. Now the addition of Amazon and Boeing brings two of the region’s tech giants into the fold.

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IonQ will open quantum computer factory in Seattle area

Quantum computer factory site in Bothell, Wash.
IonQ plans to manufacture quantum computers at a 65,000-square-foot facility in Bothell, Wash. (IonQ Photo)

Maryland-based IonQ says it’s opening a 65,000-square-foot research and manufacturing facility in Bothell, Wash., to build quantum computers. The opening is part of IonQ’s broader plan to invest $1 billion in the Pacific Northwest over the next 10 years, the company says.

The Bothell facility will be the first known dedicated quantum computer manufacturing facility in the United States, according to IonQ. Peter Chapman, the former Amazon executive who serves as IonQ’s CEO and president, said today in a news release that the Seattle area was “the best option for our new facility.”

“Advanced technologies like quantum computing are key to solving the world’s most pressing challenges such as climate change, energy and transportation,” Chapman said. “The Seattle region has been a hub of tech innovation and manufacturing for decades, and has the skilled workforce we need to design, build and manufacture our quantum computers.”

The building on Bothell’s Monte Villa Parkway, which once housed offices for AT&T Wireless, will host the company’s second quantum data center and serve as the primary production engineering location for North America. IonQ says it plans to bring thousands of jobs to the Pacific Northwest region in the years ahead.

Like artificial intelligence, quantum information science is an alluring frontier for the computer industry.

In contrast to the one-or-zero processing method that’s at the core of classical computing, quantum computing takes advantage of the weirdness of quantum physics, where a quantum bit (or “qubit”) can represent multiple values until the results are read out. Quantum processing is well-suited for solving problems that involve optimizing systems (for example, untangling Seattle traffic) or sifting through large data sets (for example, unraveling the structure of complex molecules).

IonQ was founded in 2015 as a spin-out from the University of Maryland — and uses a trapped-ion approach to quantum computing, as opposed to the superconducting-circuit approach favored by, say, IBM and Google. In addition to providing direct API access to its quantum systems, IonQ supports cloud-based quantum services offered through Amazon Braket, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

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Universe Today

Quantum data gets sent through a simulated wormhole

Illustration: Wormhole simulation visualized
The wormhole created by researchers exists purely as data. (Illustration credit: Inqnet / A. Mueller / Caltech)

For the first time, scientists have created a quantum computing experiment for studying the dynamics of wormholes — that is, shortcuts through spacetime that could get around relativity’s cosmic speed limits.

Wormholes are traditionally the stuff of science fiction, ranging from Jodie Foster’s wild ride in “Contact” to the time-bending plot twists in “Interstellar.” But the researchers behind the experiment, reported in the Dec. 1 issue of the journal Nature, hope that their work will help physicists study the phenomenon for real.

“We found a quantum system that exhibits key properties of a gravitational wormhole, yet is sufficiently small to implement on today’s quantum hardware,” Caltech physicist Maria Spiropulu said in a news release. Spiropulu, the Nature paper’s senior author, is the principal investigator for a federally funded research program known as Quantum Communication Channels for Fundamental Physics.

Don’t pack your bags for Alpha Centauri just yet: This wormhole simulation is nothing more than a simulation, analogous to a computer-generated black hole or supernova. And physicists still don’t see any conditions under which a traversable wormhole could actually be created. Someone would have to create negative energy first.

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Software tool estimates what quantum computing can do

Krysta Svore at AAAS conference in Seattle
Microsoft's Krysta Svore explains how quantum computing works at a 2020 science conference. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

What’ll it take to solve the quantum computing challenges of the future? Microsoft has an app for that — and now developers around the world can have it, too.

The app is called the Azure Quantum Resource Estimator. It’s a software tool that was originally developed for Microsoft’s internal use. The tool is already guiding the company’s effort to develop full-stack quantum computers, and now it can also help outside developers figure out how much computing power they’ll need to execute a given quantum algorithm in a reasonable amount of time.

That’s a key question, because the guidelines used for classical computing don’t necessarily apply to the quantum frontier. Unlike classical computers, quantum computers take advantage of an environment where a quantum bit — better known as a qubit — can represent a one and a zero at the same time.

Quantum approaches can be far more efficient than the standard binary computing approach for solving particular kinds of problems: optimizing a network, for example, or figuring out how to design a synthetic molecule to perform a specific chemical task.

“We’ll be able to study, for example, how to help remove harmful gases from the atmosphere,” Krysta Svore, distinguished engineer and vice president of quantum software at Microsoft, told me.

“Ten years ago, we thought it would take a billion years’ run time on a quantum computer,” Svore said. “That’s a really long time to wait. But over the last decade, we’ve been able to bring that down to a month’s run time on a quantum computer … using exactly the resource estimator, this tool, to understand the cost of the algorithm. And we’ve been able to redesign our hardware accordingly as well.”

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Microsoft adds a new superposition to quantum team

Pasqal quantum computing hardware
Pasqal’s Fresnel quantum computer makes use of the company’s neutral-atom technology. (Pasqal Photo)

Microsoft’s Azure Quantum cloud computing service will be adding a brand-new tool to its toolbox: Pasqal’s neutral-atom quantum processing system.

When the French company’s system becomes available later this year, it will provide a method for processing data that’s different from the other methods offered through Azure Quantum.

“Running algorithms on Pasqal’s neutral-atom hardware opens the door to unique capabilities no other quantum system offers,” Pasqal CEO and founder Georges-Olivier Reymond said in a news release.

Unlike the rigid one-or-zero approach of classical computing, quantum computing makes use of quantum bits, or qubits, that can essentially represent different states simultaneously until the results are read out.

Theoretically, the quantum approach should be able to solve certain types of problems, such as network optimization, much more quickly than the classical approach. The technology could open new frontiers in fields ranging from traffic planning to drug development to data encryption.

Azure Quantum — and other cloud-based services including Amazon Braket, IBM Quantum, D-Wave Leap and Google Quantum AI — are already experimenting with hybrid quantum algorithms and looking forward to the development of full-stack, general-purpose quantum computing systems.

The two main avenues for developing quantum hardware make use of superconducting circuits and ion traps. Pasqal takes a different approach, involving neutral atoms that are manipulated at room temperature with laser-powered optical “tweezers.”

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Microsoft says it’s made a crucial quantum leap

Researcher working in quantum lab
Postdoctoral researcher Xiaojing Zhao works in Microsoft’s Quantum Materials Lab. (Photo by John Brecher for Microsoft)

Microsoft says its researchers have found evidence of an exotic phenomenon that’s key to its plans to build general-purpose quantum computers.

The phenomenon, known as a Majorana zero mode, is expected to smooth the path for topological quantum computing — the technological approach that’s favored by Microsoft’s Azure Quantum program.

Quantum computing is a weird enough concept by itself: In contrast with the rigid one-or-zero world of classical computing, quantum computing juggles quantum bits, or qubits, that can represent ones and zeroes simultaneously until the results are read out.

Scientists say the quantum approach can solve certain types of problems — for example, network optimization or simulations of molecular interactions — far more quickly than the classical approach. Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and other cloud-based services are already using hybrid systems to bring some of the benefits of the quantum approach to applications ranging from drug development to traffic management.

At the same time, Microsoft and other companies are trying to build the hardware and software for “full-stack” quantum computing systems that can take on a far wider range of applications. Microsoft has chosen a particularly exotic technological strategy, which involves inducing quantum states on topological superconducting wires. To keep those quantum states stable, the wires would host Majorana zero modes localized at each end.

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Public-private partnership builds quantum supply chain

Barium ion chain
This photomicrograph shows a chain of barium ions in an IonQ quantum computing system. (IonQ Photo)

Dare we say it? Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has teamed up with IonQ to come up with a method for producing barium ions for quantum computing that could lead to … yes, that’s right, a quantum leap.

The public-private partnership could open up a new avenue for developing more resilient, more powerful hardware for trapped-ion quantum computers. The key technology involves using barium ions as the foundation for qubits, the quantum equivalent of binary bits in classical computing.

“IonQ’s work with PNNL to secure the domestic supply chain of IonQ’s quantum computing qubits is a fundamental step in the mass commercialization of quantum computing,” IonQ’s president and CEO, Peter Chapman, said today in a news release. “Qubits are at the core of our quantum computers, and this collaboration with PNNL lays the foundation for us to scale manufacturing of our systems.”

The partners say PNNL’s production process will provide a steady supply of barium-based qubits, using a microscopic smidgen of source material. That should make it possible for IonQ to reduce the size of core system components, which should in turn make it easier to network quantum computers.

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Quantum computing venture leaps into the stock market

Dilution refrigerator system
A team member at D-Wave Systems works on the cooling system for the company’s quantum computer. (D-Wave Photo / Larry Goldstein)

Burnaby, B.C.-based D-Wave Systems, the quantum computing company that counts Jeff Bezos among its investors and NASA among its customers, has struck a deal to go public with a $1.2 billion valuation.

The deal involves a combination with DPMC Capital, a publicly traded special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. It’s expected to bring in $300 million in gross proceeds from DPMC’s trust account, plus $40 million in gross proceeds from investors participating in a PIPE arrangement. (PIPE stands for “private investment in public equity.”)

Quantum computing takes advantage of phenomena at the quantum level, processing “qubits” that can represent multiple values simultaneously — as opposed to the one-or-zero paradigm of classical computing. The approach is theoretically capable of solving some types of problems much faster than classical computers.

Founded in 1999, D-Wave has focused on a type of technology called quantum annealing, which uses quantum computing principles and hardware to tackle tasks relating to network optimization and probabilistic sampling.

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How quantum tricks can ease a traffic jam in deep space

JPL Mission Control
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory monitors the Deep Space Network from Mission Control. (JPL Photo)

Microsoft has demonstrated how quantum-inspired algorithms can help smooth out Seattle’s snarled traffic, but can they solve NASA’s interplanetary data traffic jam? Initial results from a project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory suggests they can.

Microsoft’s Azure Quantum team says it’s been working with JPL to optimize the management of communications windows for the Deep Space Network. The network relies on giant radio antennas in California, Spain and Australia to handle communications with more than 30 space probes, including the James Webb Space Telescope and NASA’s Mars rovers.

Optimizing the schedule for communicating with all those probes requires intensive computer resources, especially because the DSN is having to deal with increasing demands for high-bandwidth data transmissions. “Capacity is a big pressure,” JPL’s Michael Levesque, deputy director of the DSN, said in a recent news release.

Fortunately, schedule optimization is one of the sweet spots for Azure Quantum’s algorithms.

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