Fraunhofer Institute have just unveiled the Quantum System One, the country's first superconducting quantum computer built by IBM.

Five years after IBM made its first five-qubit quantum processor available for users to access over the cloud, the company is now showing off the first quantum computer that it has physically built outside of its New York-based data centers.

All the way across the Atlantic, scientists from Germany's Fraunhofer Institute have just unveiled the IBM Quantum System One the country's first superconducting quantum computer that Big Blue was contracted to build especially for the organization.

The device, which contains one of IBM's 27-qubit Falcon processors, came online a few weeks ago and has already been made available to Fraunhofer's scientists and some of the institute's partners. German academics and organizations outside of Fraunhofer will, from now on, be welcome to arrange monthly contracts to use the computer too for research, education and training purposes.

Fraunhofer's partnership with IBM was signed last year, marking the start of a global expansion for Big Blue's quantum hardware. The company released the Quantum System One in 2019, pitching it as the world's first commercial quantum computer; but until now, users have only accessed the device over the cloud, by connecting to IBM's Quantum Computation Center located in Poughkeepsie, New York.

SEE: Building the bionic brain (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

Physically bringing the hardware to a new location for the first time was never going to be easy and the global COVID-19 pandemic only added some extra hurdles. Typically, explains Bob Sutor, chief quantum exponent at IBM, the company would've shipped some key parts and a team of in-house specialists to Germany to assemble the quantum computer, but the pandemic meant that this time, everything had to be done remotely.

IBM's engineers had to rely on NASA-inspired methods of remote assembly. "How do you train people that are thousands of miles away, when you can't just run up to them and say: 'Do this'?" Sutor tells ZDNet. "We had to train local teams remotely and work with them remotely to assemble everything and get this machine running. We developed new techniques to actually put these systems around the world without travelling there. And it worked."

To train German engineers from the local IBM development lab, Sutor's team put together a virtual course in quantum assembly. From installing the computer's refrigeration system to manipulating the Falcon processor, no detail was left out and the device successfully launched in line with the original schedule.

For Fraunhofer, this means that the institute and its partners will now have access to a leading-edge quantum computer built exclusively for German organizations, instead of relying on cloud access to US-based systems.

Since the partnership was announced, the institute has been busy investigating potential applications of quantum computing and designing quantum algorithms that might show an advantage over computations carried out with classical computing.

This is because quantum computing is nascent, and despite the huge potential that researchers are anticipating, much of the technology's promise is still theoretical. Existing quantum processors like IBM's Falcon come with too few qubits and too high an error-rate to resolve large-scale problems that are relevant to businesses. The research effort, therefore, consists of spotting the use-cases that might be suited to the technology once the hardware is ready.

"For users, they need to get in now, they need to understand what quantum computers are, what they're useful for and what are viable approaches using quantum computers that will get them an advantage over using classical computing," says Sutor.

At Fraunhofer, researchers have been looking at a variety of applications ranging from portfolio optimization in finance to logistics planning for manufacturers, through error correction protocols that could improve critical infrastructure and molecular simulation to push chemistry and materials discovery.

Working in partnership with the German Aerospace Center, for example, the institute has been conducting research to find out if quantum algorithmscould simulate electro-chemical processes within energy storage system which, in turn, could help design batteries and fuel cells with better performance and more energy density.

For Annkatrin Sommer, research coordinator at Fraunhofer, the choice of IBM as a quantum partner was a no-brainer. "We really wanted to go for cutting-edge technology where you have the ability to start developing algorithms as fast as possible," she tells ZDNet.

IBM's offer in quantum computing has some significant strengths. Since the release of its first cloud-based quantum processor, the company now has made over 20 Quantum System One machines available, which are accessed by more than 145 organizations around the world. Two billion quantum circuits are established daily with the cloud processors, and IBM is on track to break a trillion circuits before the end of the summer.

The Falcon processors used in the Quantum System One are 27 qubits, but the company is working in parallel on a chip called Hummingbird, which has 65 qubits. Big Blue recentlypublished a quantum hardware roadmapin which it pledged to achieve over 1,000 qubits by 2023 enough to start seeing the early results of quantum computing. Ultimately, IBM is aiming to produce a million-qubit quantum system.

"If I were to throw out a toy system and say: 'Here you go, play, I don't know if it'll ever get better' no one would care," says Sutor. "People need confidence that the machines and the software and apps on them will reasonably quickly be able to do work better than just classical computers."

For an institute like Fraunhofer, the rapid scaling of quantum technologies that IBM is promising is appealing. And the German organization is not alone in placing its bets on Big Blue. This year will also see an IBM Quantum System One installed in Japanas part of a partnership with the University of Tokyo; and back in the US, the Cleveland Clinichas just placed a $500 million order for IBM to build quantum hardware on-premises.

But despite IBM's credentials, Fraunhofer's research team is also keen to stress that it is too early to tell which approach or approaches to quantum computing will show results first. The industry is expanding fast, and withnew companies jumping on the quantum bandwagon every so often, it is hard to differentiate between hype and reality.

This is why, in addition to investing in IBM's superconducting qubits, Fraunhofer is also investigating the use of different approaches like ion traps or diamond.

"Currently, it's not clear which technology will be the best," says Sommer, "and we will probably have different technologies working in parallel for different use cases. It makes sense to start projects with different approaches and after some time, measure how far you got and if you reached your goals. Then, you decide with which technology you should proceed."

It remains that Germany's shiny new Quantum System One puts the country in a favorable position to compete in what isincreasingly shaping up to become a global race to lead in quantum computing.

The German government has already launched a 2 billion ($2.4 billion) funding program for the promotion of quantum technologies in the country, which comes in addition to the European Commission's 1 billion ($1.20 billion) quantum flagship.

Meanwhile, in the US, a $1.2 billion budget was allocated to the National Quantum Initiative Act in 2018. And China, for its part,has made no secret of its ambition to become a leading quantum superpower.

The UK government has also invested a total 1 billion ($1.37 billion) in a National Quantum Technologies Programme. In the next few years, the country is hoping to follow Germany's lead andlaunch its very first commercial quantum computer, which will be built by California-based company Rigetti Computing.

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IBM's first quantum computer outside of the US has just gone live - ZDNet

Illustration by Elias Stein

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Quantum computing is gearing up for prime time. Honeywell International and the U.K.s Cambridge Quantum Computing are merging their fledgling quantum-computing efforts into a company that combines Honeywells hardware expertise with privately held Cambridges software and algorithms. Its as if the two were forming the Apple of quantum computingnot because its about to be a consumer product, but because Apple marries hardware, operating systems, and software.

Honeywell believes quantum computing, which exploits quantum effects to outperform traditional computers in some calculations, can be a trillion-dollar-a-year industry someday. We are at a phase where people are looking to hear more about practical quantum use cases, and investors want to know if this is investible, says Daniel Newman, founder of Futurum, a research and advisory firm focused on digital innovation and market-disrupting technologies.

This deal will speed investor education. [Wed] be disappointed if we were only at a billion [dollars in revenue] in a few years, says Ilyas Khan, Cambridges founder and CEO. Hell be CEO of the new company, which he says will decide by year end whether to go public. He also hopes by then to have products, initially in web security (with unhackable passwords), followed by chemicals and drug development.

The new enterprise will have about 350 employees, including 200 scientists, 120 of them Ph.Ds. Honeywell, which will own 54%, is putting in some $300 million in cash. Honeywell stock didnt react to the news. Quantum computing is still too small to move the needle on a $160 billion conglomeratefor now.

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The Census Bureau reports retail-sales data for May. Expectations are for a 0.5% month-over-month decline, following a flat April. Excluding autos, spending is seen rising 0.6%, compared with a 0.8% decrease previously.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the producer price index for May. Consensus estimate is for a 0.4% monthly increase, with the core PPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, expected to rise 0.4% as well. This compares with gains of 0.6% and 0.7%, respectively, in April.

The FOMC announces its monetary-policy decision. With the federal-funds rate all but certain to remain near zero, Wall Street is looking for clues as to when the Federal Reserve might scale back its bond purchases.

Lennar reports quarterly results.

The Census Bureau reports new residential construction data for May. The economists forecast a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.63 million housing starts, slightly higher than Aprils data. Housing starts are just below their post-financial-crisis peak of 1.73 million from March.

Adobe and Kroger hold conference calls to discuss earnings.

DXC Technology and NRG Energy hold their 2021 investor days.

The Conference Board releases its Leading Economic Index for May. The LEI is expected to rise 1.1% month over month to 114.5, after gaining 1.6% in April. The index has now surpassed its pre-Covid peak, set back in January of 2020. The Conference Board now projects 8% to 9% annualized gross-domestic-product growth for the second quarter, and 6.4% for the year.

The Department of Labor reports initial jobless claims for the week ending on June 15. Jobless claims this past week were 376,000, the lowest total since March of 2020.

The Bank of Japan announces its monetary-policy decision. The central bank is widely expected to keep its key interest rate at negative 0.1%. The BOJ recently updated its GDP forecast to 4% growth for fiscal 2021 and 2.4% for fiscal 2022.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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Honeywell Does a Quantum Computing Deal. Is This the New Age of Computing? - Barron's

Intel's 17-qubit quantum test chip.

Source: Intel

Stefan Thomas really could have used a quantum computer this year.

The German-born programmer and crypto trader forgot the password to unlock his digital wallet, which contains 7,002 bitcoin, now worth $265 million. Quantum computers, which will be several million times faster than traditional computers, could have easily helped him crack the code.

Though quantum computing is still very much in its infancy, governments and private-sector companies such as Microsoft and Google are working to make it a reality. Within a decade, quantum computers could be powerful enough to break the cryptographic security that protects cell phones, bank accounts, email addresses and yes bitcoin wallets.

"If you had a quantum computer today, and you were a state sponsor China, for example most probably in about eight years, you could crack wallets on the blockchain," said Fred Thiel, CEO of cryptocurrency mining specialist Marathon Digital Holdings.

This is precisely why cryptographers around the world are racing to build a quantum-resistant encryption protocol.

Right now, much of the world runs on something called asymmetric cryptography, in which individuals use a private and public key pair to access things such as email and crypto wallets.

"Every single financial institution, every login on your phone it is all based on asymmetric cryptography, which is susceptible to hacking with a quantum computer," Thiel said. Thiel is a former director of Utimaco, one of the largest cryptography companies in Europe, which has worked with Microsoft, Google and others on post-quantum encryption.

The public-private key pair lets users produce a digital signature, using their private key, which can be verified by anyone who has the corresponding public key.

In the case of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, this digital signature is called the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm, and it ensures that bitcoin can only be spent by the rightful owner.

Theoretically, someone using quantum computing could reverse-engineer your private key, forge your digital signature, and subsequently empty your bitcoin wallet.

"If I was dealing in fear-mongering ... I'd tell you that among the first types of digital signatures that will be broken by quantum computers are elliptic curves, as we use them today, for bitcoin wallets," said Thorsten Groetker, former Utimaco CTO and one of the top experts in the field of quantum computing.

"But that would happen if we do nothing," he said.

Crypto experts told CNBC they aren't all that worried about quantum hacking of bitcoin wallets for a couple of different reasons.

Castle Island Ventures founding partner Nic Carter pointed out that quantum breaks would be gradual rather than sudden.

"We would have plenty of forewarning if quantum computing was reaching the stage of maturity and sophistication at which it started to threaten our core cryptographic primitives," he said. "It wouldn't be something that happens overnight."

There is also the fact that the community knows that it is coming, and researchers are already in the process of building quantum-safe cryptography.

"The National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) has been working on a new standard for encryption for the future that's quantum-proof," said Thiel.

NIST is running that selection process now, picking the best candidates and standardizing them.

"It's a technical problem, and there's a technical solution for it," said Groetker. "There are new and secure algorithms for digital signatures. ... You will have years of time to migrate your funds from one account to another."

Groetker said he expects the first standard quantum-safe crypto algorithm by 2024, which is still, as he put it, well before we'd see a quantum computer capable of breaking bitcoin's cryptography.

Once a newly standardized post-quantum secure cryptography is built, Groetker said, the process of mass migration will begin. "Everyone who owns bitcoin or ethereum will transfer [their] funds from the digital identity that is secured with the old type of key, to a new wallet, or new account, that's secured with a new type of key, which is going to be secure," he said.

However, this kind of upgrade in security requires users to be proactive. In some scenarios, where fiat money accounts are centralized through a bank, this process may be easier than requiring a decentralized network of crypto holders to update their systems individually.

"Not everybody, regardless of how long it takes, will move their funds in time," said Groetker. Inevitably, there will be users who forget their password or perhaps passed away without sharing their key.

"There will be a number of wallets ... that become increasingly insecure, because they're using weaker keys."

But there are ways to deal with this kind of failing in security upgrade. For example, an organization could lock down all accounts still using the old type of cryptography and give owners some way to access it. The trade-off here would be the loss of anonymity when users go to reclaim their balance.

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Hacking bitcoin wallets with quantum computers could happen but cryptographers are racing to build a workaround - CNBC

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Multinational conglomerate Honeywell said it will combine with Cambridge Quantum Computing in a bid to form the largest standalone quantum computing company in the world.

According to Honeywell, the merger will be completed in the third quarter of 2021 and will set the pace for what is projected to become a $1 trillion quantum computing industry over the next three decades.

In the yet to be named company, Honeywell will invest between $270 million and $300 million, and will own a major stake. It will also engage in an agreement for manufacturing critical ion traps needed to power quantum hardware.

The new company will be led by Ilyas Khan, the CEO and founder of CQC, a company that focuses on building software for quantum computing. Honeywell Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Darius Adamczyk will serve as chairman of the new company while Tony Uttley, currently the president of HQS, will serve as the new company's president.

"Joining together into an exciting newly combined enterprise, HQS and CQC will become a global powerhouse that will develop and commercialize quantum solutions that address some of humanity's greatest challenges, while driving the development of what will become a $1 trillion industry," Khan said in a statement.

With this new company, both firms plan to use Honeywells hardware expertise and Cambridges software platforms to build the worlds highest-performing computer.

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Honeywell joins hands with Cambridge Quantum Computing to form a new company - The Hindu

Cambridge Quantum Computing, a quantum computing and algorithm company founded by Ilyas Khan, Leader in Residence and a Fellow in Management Practice at Cambridge Judge Business School, announced it will combine with Honeywell Quantum Solutions, a unit of US-based Honeywell, which has been an investor in Cambridge Quantum since 2019.

Ilyas was also the inaugural Chairman of the Stephen Hawking Foundation, is a fellow commoner of St Edmunds College, and was closely involved in the foundation of the Accelerate Cambridge programme run by the Business Schools Entrepreneurship Centre.

The new company is extremely well-positioned to lead the quantum computing industry by offering advanced, fully integrated hardware and software solutions at an unprecedented pace, scale and level of performance to large high-growth markets worldwide, Cambridge Quantum said in an announcement.

The combination will form the largest, most advanced standalone quantum computing company in the world, setting the pace for what is projected to become a $1 trillion quantum computing industry over the next three decades, Honeywell said in a companion announcement.

The new company, which will be formally named at a later date, will be led by Cambridge Quantum founder Ilyas Khan as Chief Executive with Tony Uttley of Honeywell Quantum Solutions as President. Honeywell Chairman and CEO Darius Adamczyk will serve on the board of directors as the Chairman. Honeywell will have a 54% share of the merged entity, which was dubbed by publication Barrons as the Apple of Quantum Computing, and CQCs shareholders will have a 46% share.

In addition, Honeywell will invest between $270 million to $300 million in the new company. Cambridge Quantum was founded in 2014, and has offices in Cambridge, London and Oxford, and abroad in the US, Germany and Japan.

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New quantum computing company will set the pace - Cambridge Network

Trinity and Microsoft join forces to accelerate next-generation quantum technologies. Cathriona Hallahan, managing director of Microsoft Ireland and Prof Linda Doyle, who will become Provost of Trinity College Dublin later this year at the announcement in Trinity on Friday.

Trinity College Dublin has joined forces with Microsoft Ireland to accelerate the development of next-generation quantum technologies and support future leaders in the field.

Under the agreement, Microsoft will provide funding to support quantum research PhD students in Trinity College, while also establishing a female scholarship programme for the colleges MSc in Quantum Science and Technology.

The collaboration will support quantum research teams in Trinitys School of Physics and foster links with research teams in the private sector.

Having emerged from fundamental science over the last two decades, quantum research is now blossoming and promises to revolutionise technology in the coming years with discoveries and innovations that promise to power a more sustainable, advanced future, said Prof John Goold, who is directing the new MSc in Quantum Science and Technology course.

Microsoft recently announced a full-stack, open-cloud quantum computing ecosystem, named Azure Quantum. Quantum computers can solve in a matter of seconds problems that would take the fastest computers today thousands of years to solve, presenting the opportunity to address climate change, significant pharmaceutical advancements, and so on.

Quantum computing presents unprecedented possibilities to solve societys most complex challenges and help to secure a sustainable future. At Microsoft, were committed to responsibly turning these possibilities into reality for the betterment of humanity and the planet, Cathriona Hallahan, Managing Director, Microsoft Ireland said.

The introduction of the female scholarship programme is a welcome one and I believe more focused mechanisms such as this will help us to attract more females not only into the area of next-generation quantum technologies but also wider STEM related industries.

Prof Goold also praised support for the female-only scholarship programme.

As diversity has grown in my research team at Trinity, we have been more creative in pursuing and delivering high-quality science. Female uptake in certain STEM subjects remains low but initiatives like this are helping to drive positive change he said.

The Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science Simon Harris welcomed the collaboration. I am delighted to see this strong collaboration between Trinity College Dublin and Microsoft. Quantum computing technology will be instrumental in solving some of societys biggest challenges and seeing Ireland at the forefront of this research is tremendously important, he said.

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Trinity College teams up with Microsoft on quantum computing programme - The Irish Times

Google is aiming to build a useful, error-corrected quantum computer by the end of the decade, the company explained in a blog post. The search giant hopes the technology will help solve a range of big problems like feeding the world and climate change to developing better medicines. To develop the technology, Google has unveiled a new Quantum AI campus in Santa Barbara containing a quantum data center, hardware research labs, and quantum processor chip fabrication facilities. It will spend billions developing the technology over the next decade, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The target announced at Google I/O on Tuesday comes a year and a half after Google said it had achieved quantum supremacy, a milestone where a quantum computer has performed a calculation that would be impossible on a traditional classical computer. Google says its quantum computer was able to perform a calculation in 200 seconds that would have taken 10,000 years or more on a traditional supercomputer. But competitors racing to build quantum computers of their own cast doubt on Googles claimed progress. Rather than taking 10,000 years, IBM argued at the time that a traditional supercomputer could actually perform the task in 2.5 days or less.

This extra processing power could be useful to simulate molecules, and hence nature, accurately, Google says. This might help us design better batteries, creating more carbon-efficient fertilizer, or develop more targeted medicines, because a quantum computer could run simulations before a company invests in building real-world prototypes. Google also expects quantum computing to have big benefits for AI development.

Despite claiming to have hit the quantum supremacy milestone, Google says it has a long way to go before such computers are useful. While current quantum computers are made up of less than 100 qubits, Google is targeting machine built with 1,000,000. Getting there is a multistage process. Google says it first needs to cut down on the errors qubits make, before it can think about building 1,000 physical qubits together into a single logical qubit. This will lay the groundwork for the quantum transistor, a building block of future quantum computers.

Despite the challenges ahead, Google is optimistic about its chances. We are at this inflection point, the scientist in charge of Googles Quantum AI program, Hartmut Neven, told the Wall Street Journal, We now have the important components in hand that make us confident. We know how to execute the road map. Googles eventually plans to offer quantum computing services over the cloud.

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Google wants to build a useful quantum computer by 2029 - The Verge

circa 1931: German-born physicist Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) standing beside a blackboard with ... [+] chalk-marked mathematical calculations written across it. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

40 years ago, Nobel Prize-winner Richard Feynman argued that nature isn't classical, dammit, and if you want to make a simulation of nature, you'd better make it quantum mechanical. This was later perceived as a rallying cry for developing a quantum computer, leading to todays rapid progress in the search for quantum supremacy. Heres a very short history of the evolution of quantum computing.

1905Albert Einstein explains the photoelectric effectshining light on certain materials can function to release electrons from the materialand suggests that light itself consists of individual quantum particles or photons.

1924The term quantum mechanics is first used in a paper by Max Born

1925Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and Pascual Jordan formulate matrix mechanics, the first conceptually autonomous and logically consistent formulation of quantum mechanics

1925 to 1927Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg develop the Copenhagen interpretation, one of the earliest interpretations of quantum mechanics which remains one of the most commonly taught

1930Paul Dirac publishes The Principles of Quantum Mechanics, a textbook that has become a standard reference book that is still used today

1935Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen publish a paper highlighting the counterintuitive nature of quantum superpositions and arguing that the description of physical reality provided by quantum mechanics is incomplete

1935Erwin Schrdinger, discussing quantum superposition with Albert Einstein and critiquing the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, develops a thought experiment in which a cat (forever known as Schrdingers cat) is simultaneously dead and alive; Schrdinger also coins the term quantum entanglement

1947Albert Einstein refers for the first time to quantum entanglement as spooky action at a distance in a letter to Max Born

1976Roman Stanisaw Ingarden of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toru, Poland, publishes one of the first attempts at creating a quantum information theory

1980Paul Benioff of the Argonne National Laboratory publishes a paper describing a quantum mechanical model of a Turing machine or a classical computer, the first to demonstrate the possibility of quantum computing

1981In a keynote speech titled Simulating Physics with Computers, Richard Feynman of the California Institute of Technology argues that a quantum computer had the potential to simulate physical phenomena that a classical computer could not simulate

1985David Deutsch of the University of Oxford formulates a description for a quantum Turing machine

1992The DeutschJozsa algorithm is one of the first examples of a quantum algorithm that is exponentially faster than any possible deterministic classical algorithm

1993The first paper describing the idea of quantum teleportation is published

1994Peter Shor of Bell Laboratories develops a quantum algorithm for factoring integers that has the potential to decrypt RSA-encrypted communications, a widely-used method for securing data transmissions

1994The National Institute of Standards and Technology organizes the first US government-sponsored conference on quantum computing

1996Lov Grover of Bell Laboratories invents the quantum database search algorithm

1998First demonstration of quantum error correction; first proof that a certain subclass of quantum computations can be efficiently emulated with classical computers

1999Yasunobu Nakamura of the University of Tokyo and Jaw-Shen Tsai of Tokyo University of Science demonstrate that a superconducting circuit can be used as a qubit

2002The first version of the Quantum Computation Roadmap, a living document involving key quantum computing researchers, is published

2004First five-photon entanglement demonstrated by Jian-Wei Pan's group at the University of Science and Technology in China

2011The first commercially available quantum computer is offered by D-Wave Systems

2012 1QB Information Technologies (1QBit), the first dedicated quantum computing software company, is founded

2014Physicists at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, teleport information between two quantum bits separated by about 10 feet with zero percent error rate

2017 Chinese researchers report the first quantum teleportation of independent single-photon qubits from a ground observatory to a low Earth orbit satellite with a distance of up to 1400 km

2018The National Quantum Initiative Act is signed into law by President Donald Trump, establishing the goals and priorities for a 10-year plan to accelerate the development of quantum information science and technology applications in the United States

2019Google claims to have reached quantum supremacy by performing a series of operations in 200 seconds that would take a supercomputer about 10,000 years to complete; IBM responds by suggesting it could take 2.5 days instead of 10,000 years, highlighting techniques a supercomputer may use to maximize computing speed

The race for quantum supremacy is on, to being able to demonstrate a practical quantum device that can solve a problem that no classical computer can solve in any feasible amount of time. Speedand sustainabilityhas always been the measure of the jump to the next stage of computing.

In 1944, Richard Feynman, then a junior staff member at Los Alamos, organized a contest between human computers and the Los Alamos IBM facility, with both performing a calculation for the plutonium bomb. For two days, the human computers kept up with the machines. But on the third day, recalled an observer, the punched-card machine operation began to move decisively ahead, as the people performing the hand computing could not sustain their initial fast pace, while the machines did not tire and continued at their steady pace (seeWhen Computers Were Human, by David Alan Greer).

Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman stands in front of a blackboard strewn with notation ... [+] in his lab in Los Angeles, Californina. (Photo by Kevin Fleming/Corbis via Getty Images)

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27 Milestones In The History Of Quantum Computing - Forbes

The spark about quantum computing is considered to have set out from a three-day discussion at the MIT Conference Center out of Boston, in 1981. The meeting, The Physics of Computation, was collaboratively sponsored by IBM and MITs Laboratory of computer science. The discussion aimed to formulate new processes for efficient ways of computing and bring the area of study into the mainstream. Quantum computing was not a popularly discussed field of science till then. The historic conference was presided over by many talented brains including Richard Feynman, Paul Benioff, Edward Fredkin, Leonid Levin, Freeman Dyson, and Arthur Burks, who were computer scientists and physicists.

Richard Feynman was a renowned theoretical physicist who received a Nobel Prize in Physics, in 1965 with other two physicists, for his contributions towards the development of quantum electrodynamics. The conference was a seminal moment in the development of quantum computing and Richard Feynman announced that to simulate quantum computation, there is a need for quantum computers. Later, he went on to publish a paper in 1982, titled Simulating Physics with Computers.The area of study soon got attention from computer scientists and physicists. Hence, the work on quantum computing began.

Before this, in 1980, Paul Benioff had described a first quantum mechanical model of a computer in one of his papers, which had already acted as a foundation for the study. After Feynmans statement in the conference, Paul Benioff went on to develop his model of quantum mechanical Turing machine.

However, almost a decade later, came Shors algorithm, developed by Peter Shor, which is considered a milestone in the history of quantum computing. This algorithm allowed quantum computers to factor large integers at a higher speed and could also break numerous cryptosystems. The discovery garnered a lot of interest in the study of quantum computing as it replaced the years taken by the classic, traditional computing algorithms to perform factoring by just some hours. Later, in 1996, Lov Grover invented the quantum database search algorithm, which exhibited a quadratic speedup that could solve any problem that had to be solved by random brute-force search and could also be applied to a wider base of problems.

The year 1998 witnessed the first experimental demonstration of a quantum algorithm that worked on a 2-qubit NMR quantum computer. Later in the year, a working 3-qubit NMR computer was developed and Grovers algorithm got executed for the first time in an NMR quantum computer. Several experimental progress took place between 1999 and 2009.

In 2009, the first universal programmable quantum computer was unveiled by a team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Colorado. The computer was capable of processing 2 quantum bits.

After almost a decade, IBM unveiled the first commercially usable integrated quantum computing system, and later in the year, IBM added 4 more quantum computing systems, along with a newly developed 53-qubit quantum computer. Google also gave a huge contribution to the field in late 2019, when a paper published by the Google research team claimed to have reached quantum supremacy. The 54-qubit Sycamore processor, made of tiny qubits and superconducting materials is claimed to have sampled a computation in just 200 seconds. Last year, IonQ launched its trapped ion quantum computers and made them commercially available through the cloud. There have been several experiments and research that are being carried on today. Each day becomes a new step for quantum computing technology since its proclamation back in the 80s.

According to a report by Fast Company, IBM plans to complete the 127-qubit IBM Quantum Eagle this year and expects to develop a 1000-qubit computing machine called the IBM Quantum Condor by 2023. IBM has been keeping up in the path of developing the best quantum computing solutions since it hosted the conference in 1981. Charlie Bennet, a renowned physicist who was part of the conference as IBMs research contingent, has a huge contribution to these innovations put forward by the company.

The emerging era of quantum computing will invite many breakthroughs. The quantum computing revolution will increase processing efficiency and solve intrinsic quantum problems. Quantum computer works with quantum bits or qubits that can be in the superposition of states that will cater to massive calculations at an extremely faster pace.

Quantum computing will have a greater impact on almost all industries and business operations. It is capable of molecular modeling, cryptography, weather forecasting, drug discovery, and more. Quantum computing is also said to be a significant component of artificial intelligence, which is fuelling several businesses and real-life functions today. We might soon reach the state of quantum supremacy and businesses need to become quantum-ready by then.

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Quantum Computing: The Chronicle of its Origin and Beyond - Analytics Insight

Quantum computing is somethingwe struggle to even begin to understand. This video helped.

What makes quantum computing special is also what makes it challenging. To use quantum computers, you have to maintain the entanglement between the qubits long enough to actually do the calculation. And quantum effects are really, really sensitive even to smallest disturbances. To be reliable, quantum computer therefore need to operate with several copies of the information, together with an error correction protocol. And to do this error correction, you need more qubits. Estimates say that the number of qubits we need to reach for a quantum computer to do reliable and useful calculations that a conventional computer cant do is about a million.

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Musiciansincluding Cait ORiordan, Darryl D.M.C McDaniels, Peter Hook, and moredescribe their journeys to sobriety.

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