The Week in Quantum Computing - March 15th
Issue #27
The Week in Quantum Computing. Brought to you by Sergio Gago (@piratecto) and The Quantum World Association.
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By @piratecto
Quick Recap
I really don’t know how to start this week’s recap since IonQ has taken all over the news. So I will just put the financial forecast that IonQ put in their SPAC deck. $272M EBITDA by 2026. You can draw your own conclusions based on the data we have been sharing in this newsletter (i.e. qubit realization roadmap, etc).
Honeywell has managed another record in quantum volume. Majoranas are more elusive than ever. The official launch of Floq for quantum simulation (as a repurpose of their tensor computing units by Google). Canada directly invests $40M in D-Wave. And Barcelona University launch a Masters in Quantum Computing. Highly recommended!
The Quote of the Week
"It is ideally possible to build sequential circuits with zero internal power dissipation."
Tomasso Toffoli - professor of electrical and computer engineering at Boston University and inventor of the Toffoli gate.
Featured Content
Quantum Business Europe (March 16th/17th), is the new must-attend digital event to learn about the advancements and business applications of quantum technologies. Discover the first use cases, exchange ideas, and better understand all the challenges of this upcoming revolution.
Quantum Pirates and QWA readers receive a 25% discount booking with this code: QBE-QWA. Register here.
Quantum Definitions (by @quantumfyed)
The folks at @quantumfyed are creating amazing infographies explaining quantum mechanics and quantum computing concepts. We will be posting some of them here. Follow them for great content: Twitter: https://twitter.com/quantumfyed and Instagram: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/quantumfyed/
The Summary of the Week
Pivotal Discovery Could Open New Field of Quantum Technology Called “Magnonics”
In a first-of-its-kind discovery, researchers in the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and Argonne National Laboratory announced they can directly control the interactions between two types of quantum particles called microwave photons and magnons.
Link: https://ift.tt/2OcBwXk
March 07, 2021 at 12:33PM
Schrödinger’s Unicorns: 12 Private Quantum Startups That May Become — Or May Already Be — Billion Dollar Companies
The quantum space is barely a space, compared to other more mature deeptech areas, it’s more of a niche. But several quantum technology companies are already proving that they have the potential for commercialization necessary to earn billion-dollar valuation status.
Link: https://ift.tt/3taunGb
March 07, 2021 at 06:33PM
Honeywell Sets New Record For Quantum Computing Performance
Honeywell Quantum Solutions’ streak of setting new records for quantum volume continues. Through performance upgrades, System Model H1 achieved a quantum volume of 512, the highest measured on a commercial quantum computer to date.
Link: https://ift.tt/2MVvWZ1
March 07, 2021 at 06:33PM
IonQ To Become The First Publicly Traded Pure-Play Quantum Computing Company.
The Transaction will result in $650 million in gross proceeds, including a $350 million fully committed PIPE with participation from Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, Silver Lake, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, MSD Partners, L.P.
Link: https://www.zdnet.com/article/ionq-to-go-public-via-spac-deal-becomes-quantum-computing-pure-play/
March 08, 2021 at 05:33PM
UK Research and Innovation Initiative to Invest £153M in Quantum Tech which will Significantly Impact Financial Services
The UK government, via the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), is planning to invest £153 million, in order to create new products and services that are based on recent advancements in quantum technologies. Quantum tech is expected to have a major impact on the financial services sector.
Link: https://ift.tt/3egrVcG
March 09, 2021 at 10:33AM
China five-year plan aims for supremacy in AI, quantum computing
China's tech industry has been hit hard by US trade battles and the economic uncertainties of the pandemic, but it's eager to bounce back in the relatively near future.
Link: https://ift.tt/3qq6gkS
March 09, 2021 at 10:33AM
EU sets target for semiconductors and quantum technologies
The EU’s '2030 Digital Compass' plan - presented this week by the European Commission - lays out the bloc’s ambitions to advance its digital technology sectors.
Link: https://ift.tt/3bwyJkW
March 10, 2021 at 08:33AM
Microsoft-Led Team Retracts Disputed Quantum-Computing Paper
The retracted paper came from a lab headed by Microsoft physicist Leo Kouwenhoven at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. It claimed to have found evidence of Majorana particles, long-theorized but never conclusively detected.
Link: https://ift.tt/2N1HDNQ
March 10, 2021 at 09:33AM
Alphabet is repurposing Google TPUs for quantum computing simulations
Sandbox at Alphabet, Google parent company Alphabet’s second, secretive software development team, plans to launch a set of APIs called Floq that will allow developers to use tensor processing units (TPUs) to simulate quantum computing workloads. The announcement, which was made during a February livestream that garnered little mainstream attention, hints at the potential for hardware originally designed for AI applications to extend into the quantum realm.
Link: https://ift.tt/30BTK7b
March 10, 2021 at 09:33PM
Paper: Certificates of quantum many-body properties assisted by machine learning
Computationally intractable tasks are often encountered in physics and optimization. Such tasks often comprise a cost function to be optimized over a so-called feasible set, which is specified by a set of constraints. This may yield, in general, to difficult and non-convex optimization tasks. A number of standard methods are used to tackle such problems: variational approaches focus on parameterizing a subclass of solutions within the feasible set; in contrast, relaxation techniques have been proposed to approximate it from outside, thus complementing the variational approach by providing ultimate bounds to the global optimal solution. In this work, we propose a novel approach combining the power of relaxation techniques with deep reinforcement learning in order to find the best possible bounds within a limited computational budget. We illustrate the viability of the method in the context of finding the ground state energy of many-body quantum systems, a paradigmatic problem in quantum physics. We benchmark our approach against other classical optimization algorithms such as breadth-first search or Monte-Carlo, and we characterize the effect of transfer learning. We find the latter may be indicative of phase transitions, with a completely autonomous approach. Finally, we provide tools to generalize the approach to other common applications in the field of quantum information processing.
Link: https://ift.tt/2OLtpkp
March 11, 2021 at 12:33PM
'How can we compete with Google?': the battle to train quantum coders
There is a laboratory deep within University College London (UCL) that looks like a cross between a rebel base in Star Wars and a scene imagined by Jules Verne.
Link: https://ift.tt/2tmmPXg
March 11, 2021 at 03:33PM
DOE Announces $30 Million for Quantum Information Science to Tackle Emerging 21st Century Challenges
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced plans to provide $30 million for Quantum Information Science (QIS) research that helps scientists understand how nature works on an extremely small scale—100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair.
Link: https://ift.tt/38s5b61
March 11, 2021 at 05:33PM
Welcome To The Future: Navigating The Rich, Intertwined Quantum Software Ecosystem
Paul Lipman is an experienced cybersecurity CEO. He's passionate about the intersection of quantum computing and cybersecurity. As a software CEO, I’ve witnessed the transformative impact of advanced technologies like machine learning.
Link: https://ift.tt/3cnQl1j
March 11, 2021 at 09:33PM
Government of Canada contribution strengthens Canada's position as a global leader in quantum computing
Today, the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, announced a $40-million contribution to D-Wave Systems Inc. of Burnaby, British Columbia, one of Canada's most innovative and intellectual property–rich firms. This contribution will support a $120-million project to develop quantum computer hardware and software systems, ensuring that Canada remains at the forefront of quantum technology development.
Link: https://ift.tt/3rGnGLk
March 11, 2021 at 09:33PM
Quantum computing: Quantum annealing versus gate-based quantum computers
Quantum technologies have long been pitched as a way to fundamentally change the way drugs are discovered; to start putting the theory to the test, researchers from pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) have been toying with top-notch quantum devices, comparing the methods put forward by IBM
Link: https://ift.tt/3vhBjTJ
March 11, 2021 at 11:33PM
Quantum Master Barcelona
The Master in Quantum Science and Technologies is aimed at graduates in Physics, Physical Engineering or equivalent degrees who want to continue specialization studies in Quantum Science and Technologies.
Link: https://ift.tt/3ljykpe
March 12, 2021 at 10:33PM