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Roger Sloan is preparing for some Canadian visitors to his home in Houston this week.

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The PGA Tour player from B.C. isnt waiting on the arrival of sun-seeking snowbirds though, with five other Canucks in the field beginning Thursday at Memorial Park Golf Course, Sloan is preparing for a home game of sorts as the PGA Tour lands in his adopted city.

Weve got a few of the Canadian guys coming over tonight, Sloan said during a virtual press conference for the Houston Open on Tuesday. Well have some good steaks, well have some good wine, well hang out with the kids. Yeah, its going to be a good week.

Sloan has reason to enjoy himself as he begins his fifth PGA Tour season, his fourth in a row since gaining and losing tour status in his rookie 2015 season.

Earlier this year, the 34-year-old was well outside the FedEx Cup top-125 as the tour playoffs approached. Sloan, however, saved his best for last, finishing the regular season with a sixth-place finish at the Barracuda Championship, and a T2 finish birdieing two of his final three holes to join a playoff at the regular season-ending Wyndham Championship. The impressive results saw him jump from 137th to 92nd in the standings, make the playoffs, and secure his status for the 2021-22 season.

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I kind of attribute it a little bit to my Canadian background, a little bit blue collar, Sloan said. I just never give up. I was a third-line grinder type of hockey player, so I never give up. Doesnt matter whether Im teeing it up on Sunday in 65th or teeing it up in 5th, Im going to put a solid effort in and Im never going to give up, Im always going to put my best foot forward.

Sloan attributes his recent success to an improved mental attitude, but the blue collar philosophy he brought with him from Merritt, B.C., could also sabotage him at times. In his rookie season he had a hard time coming to terms with the idea that in one good week he could make more than his father and friends back home could make in a year. Even more recently he would allow his mind to go through some dangerous what-ifs as he was chasing a good finish.

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Sometimes I get caught up in the magnitude of the situation, I can go down the storylines of what that shot represents or what a good finish that week represents, he said. Meanwhile, Im just sitting in the middle of the 16th fairway with a 6-iron in my hand and Ive gone down this pipeline of all these thoughts and it just builds the shot up too much to where its not a 6-iron anymore, now its the most crucial shot Ive ever hit in my career. Just being able to separate myself from the storylines and really turning a 6-iron into just a 6-iron.

His clutch late-season finishes are proof to him that the work on the mental side is paying off.

Sloan attended college at the University of Texas-El Paso and has lived in the state since graduating in 2009. His wife Casey is a Houston native and the area has become home for the couple and their two children. He confirmed on Tuesday that neighbours arent likely to forget the outdoor skating rink he built during a freak ice storm last winter.

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Everyone needs a Canadian in their neighborhood when the freeze comes, he said.

Although there has been plenty to smile about recently, the pandemic and travel restrictions have taken a toll on the Sloans, who continue to travel the U.S. as a family on the PGA Tour.

Honestly, its been really tough, he said. I havent been back to Canada since the pandemic started. Ive got a soon-to-be 2-year-old son, hes never been to Canada. Its really tough. Ive had two grandparents pass away in the last eight months and not being able to go home right away and go see my family in those moments is really difficult.

With borders re-opening, some sense of normality returning and a little time off coming up before the 2022 PGA Tour schedule kicks off in Hawaii in January, perhaps the Sloans will be able to make the long-awaited trip north. This week though, hell be enjoying the comfort of his adopted-home, and hosting some hungry Canadians.

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EUROPEAN TOUR GETS NEW CASH AND MORE MONEY

Golf has a new world tour but its not a rival upstart and its coming from the old world.

Beginning next year, the European Tour will be rebranded the DP World Tour in a deal that will see total prize money double to more than $200 million.

The launch of the DP World Tour in 2022 will herald a new era in global golf, and crucially it will benefit everybody involved all our players, caddies, fans and partners, said chief executive of the European Tour Keith Pelley.

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The Canadian-raised Pelley, who was previously president of Rogers Media, went on to say the change in title better reflects the tours global reach. With DP World as the title sponsor, the tour also announced minimum tournament purses of $2 million, and a $10 million US purse for the season-ending DP World Tour Championship.

With just 23 of the tours 47 scheduled events set to take place in Europe, it seems a fitting change for a tour that had its share of troubles coming out of the pandemic.

The European Tour throughout COVID and coming out of COVID, there has been a lot of events that are not up to the standard that the tour is at, or should be at, Irishman Shane Lowry told the Golf Channel. Im delighted for everyone that plays the tour full time. DP World is a Dubai-based logistics company that has been associated with the European Tour for more than a decade.

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McCARTHY: Sloan the Canadian host at Houston Open - Toronto Sun

An IBM quantum computer.

Cryptocurrencies hold the potential to change finance, eliminating middlemen and bringing accounts to millions of unbanked people around the world. Quantum computers could upend the way pharmaceuticals and materials are designed by bringing their extraordinary power to the process.

Here's the problem: The blockchain accounting technology that powers cryptocurrencies could be vulnerable to sophisticated attacks and forged transactions if quantum computing matures faster than efforts to future-proof digital money.

Spice up your small talk with the latest tech news, products and reviews. Delivered on weekdays.

Cryptocurrencies are secured by a technology called public key cryptography. The system is ubiquitous, protecting your online purchases and scrambling your communications for anyone other than the intended recipient. The technology works by combining a public key, one that anyone can see, with a private key that's for your eyes only.

If current progress continues, quantum computers will be able to crack public key cryptography, potentially creating a serious threat to the crypto world, where some currencies are valued at hundreds of billions of dollars. If encryption is broken, attackers can impersonate the legitimate owners of cryptocurrency, NFTs or other such digital assets.

"Once quantum computing becomes powerful enough, then essentially all the security guarantees will go out of the window," Dawn Song, a computer security entrepreneur and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told the Collective[i] Forecast forum in October. "When public key cryptography is broken, users could be losing their funds and the whole system will break."

Quantum computers get their power by manipulating data stored on qubits, elements like charged atoms that are subject to the peculiar physics governing the ultrasmall. To crack encryption, quantum computers will need to harness thousands of qubits, vastly more than the dozens corralled by today's machines. The machines will also need persistent qubits that can perform calculations much longer than the fleeting moments possible right now.

But makers of quantum computers are working hard to address those shortcomings. They're stuffing ever more qubits into machines and working on quantum error correction methods to help qubits perform more-sophisticated and longer calculations.

"We expect that within a few years, sufficiently powerful computers will be available" for cracking blockchains open, said Nir Minerbi, CEO of quantum software maker Classiq Technologies.

The good news for cryptocurrency fans is the quantum computing problem can be fixed by adopting the same post-quantum cryptography technology that the computing industry already has begun developing. The US government's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), trying to get ahead of the problem, is several years into a careful process to find quantum-proof cryptography algorithms with involvement from researchers around the globe.

Indeed, several cryptocurrency and blockchain efforts are actively working on quantum resistant software:

A problem with the post-quantum cryptography algorithms under consideration so far, though, is that they generally need longer numeric encryption keys and longer processing times, says Peter Chapman, CEO of quantum computer maker IonQ. That could substantially increase the amount of computing horsepower needed to house blockchains.

Many cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, are decentralized by design, overseen in effect by anyone who participates in each cryptocurrency network. To update a cryptocurrency's inner workings, people trying to upgrade a cryptocurrency must convince more than half of participants to "fork" the cryptocurrency into a new version.

The real quantum test for cryptocurrencies will be governance structures, not technologies, says Hunter Jensen, chief technology officer of Permission.io, a company using cryptocurrency for a targeted advertising system.

Such governance could reward cryptocurrencies that have stronger central powers, such as Dash with its masternodes or even "govcoins" issued by central banks, that can in principle move more swiftly to adopt post-quantum protection. But it presents a conundrum in the crypto community, which often rejects the idea of authority.

"It will be the truly decentralized currencies which will get hit if their communities are too slow and disorganized to act," said Andersen Cheng, chief executive at Post Quantum, a London based company that sells post-quantum encryption technology.

Another risk is that blockchains rely on a digital fingerprinting technology called hashing that quantum computers could disrupt. That's likely to be fixable with more-modest technology updates, though.

The cryptocurrency wallets people use to keep track of their digital assets could also be vulnerable to quantum computing. These wallets store private keys people need to access their assets recorded on the blockchain. A successful attack could empty a wallet.

"How do you force users to upgrade keys? That answer is not so straightforward and likely the most dangerous part," said Joe Genereux, senior cryptography and security engineer at browser maker Brave, which uses its own Basic Attention Token (BAT) cryptocurrency for an ad system that pays users. "I think cryptocurrencies that have better governance or post-quantum designs baked in early can get around this issue better."

Ultimately, though, cryptocurrency's organic, self-directed development suggests people will update the digital asset technology to surmount quantum computing's challenges, says David Sacco, who teaches at the University of New Haven.

"The beauty of the ecosystem," he said, "is that anyone can do it if they understand the technology."

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Cryptocurrency faces a quantum computing problem - CNET

The latest breakthrough in the field of quantum computing could pave the way for complex simulations that tell us about the earliest moments of the universe and more.

A team of researchers from the University of Waterloo, Canada, claims to have performed the first ever simulation of baryons (a highly complex type of subatomic particle) on a quantum computer.

To achieve this goal, the researchers paired a traditional computer with a quantum machine in the cloud, and developed from scratch a quantum algorithm that was resource-efficient enough to allow the system to shoulder the workload.

Until now, computers have only been able to simulate the composite elements of baryons (which are made up of three quarks), but the research paper shows its possible to perform detailed quantum simulations with many baryons.

Although the science is complex, the broad significance is this: scientists will be able to simulate aspects of physics completely out of reach for traditional supercomputers.

According to the researchers, the breakthrough represents a landmark step towards overcoming the limitations of classical computing and allowing the massive potential of quantum computers to be realized.

This is an important step forward - it is the first simulation of baryone on a quantum computer ever, said Christine Muschik, faculty member at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC). Instead of smashing particles in an accelerator, a quantum computer may one day allow us to simulate these interactions that we use to study the origins of the universe and so much more.

More specifically, researchers will be able to simulate complex lattice gauge theories, which describe the physics of reality. So-called non-Abelian gauge theories are said to be particularly attractive candidates for quantum simulation, as they relate to the stability of matter in the universe.

While the most powerful traditional computers are able to simulate simple non-Abelian gauge theories, only a quantum computer (as has now been proven) can perform the complex simulations necessary to unpack the inner workings of the universe.

Whats exciting about these results for us is that the theory can be made so much more complicated, added Jinglei Zhang, another researcher at the IQC. We can consider simulating matter at higher densities, which is beyond the capability of classical computers.

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Quantum computing breakthrough may help us learn about the earliest moments of the universe - TechRadar

Quantum computing has the potential to fundamentally transform the technology industry by applying the weird effects of the quantum realm to complex business problems. But right now, quantum computing faces a more mundane problem itself: finding enough recruits.

Demand for digital skills in the workplace has been on a steady upward trend for years, but the sudden increased reliance on technology since the start of 2020 has made competition in tech recruitment even more fierce.

The CIO's guide to Quantum computing

Quantum computers offer great promise for cryptography and optimization problems, and companies are racing to make them practical for business use. ZDNet explores what quantum computers will and wont be able to do, and the challenges that remain.

Read More

The challenge is even greater for organizations dealing in highly specialized technologies. Quantum computing, for example, combines a variety of specialist fields such as quantum theory, advanced mathematics, and computer science that aren't seen on your typical CV, shrinking the talent pool considerably for companies looking to hire in this nascent, but increasingly competitive, industry.

SEE:Quantum computing's next big challenge: A quantum skills shortage

"It is incredibly small," says Samantha Edmondson, head of talent at British quantum computing startup, Universal Quantum, which is on a mission to build the world's first million-qubit quantum computer.

"Say if we were looking to hire an experienced quantum physicist that had the kind of expertise we needed, then yes, you're looking at a small handful of academic groups across the world that you can really pick from."

Quantum computers operate on inherently different principles to classical computers, requiring a new approach to problem-solving and a workforce consisting of academic, technical, and businesses expertise.

No one candidate is going to possess all of these. "It involves so many different skills: we need classical hardware engineers, we need software engineers, we need mathematicians, we need simulation and modelling experts," says Edmondson.

"I think the challenge for us is, if we go to hire a classical engineer, they don't have the physics background; if we hire a physicist, they're not used to working with classical hardware engineering analogue design is new to them."

Another fundamental challenge for businesses is getting people interested in technical fields to begin with.

Not only are fewer young people taking IT and STEM-related subjects at school, but research also suggests that younger generations aren't all too confident about their chances of landing a career in tech either.

Robert Liscouski, CEO of Quantum Computing Inc (QCI), says this is reflective of endemic problems in how young people are educated, which doesn't necessarily include skills that are transferrable into the modern, professional workforce. "I think we're not doing a very good job at all of preparing young people for these technology jobs," he tells ZDNet.

"I think we still have this 19th Century education going on that's really focused on educating children so they can work in factories."

Better education, meanwhile, remains out of reach for most. "Where I live in Northern Virginia, we have a couple of academies that are geared for really advanced education in the secondary school and high schoolThe admission requirements in those programmes are so competitive that kids need to be at the absolute top of their game," says Liscouski.

"That's great you want that advanced thinking. But we need to figure out how we kind of bring that into the entire high school system and inculcate these kids into thinking about technology differently."

One solution for the shortage of specialist tech talent is for employers to bring on employees that are not necessarily already experts in the field, and then train them up on the job.

For a field like quantum computing, this still means being selective in the candidates you can hire higher-level education and expertise in mathematics, physics, engineering, and coding are always going to rank highly, for instance. Even so, internships and training programs can help to lower the barriers to entry.

Universal Quantum runs a three-month internship scheme that's open to graduates who hold a master's in physics or mathematics. Typically, interns take on a specific project that they are given total responsibility for, with Universal Quantum providing support through one-on-one mentoring and drop-in sessions with quantum physicists.

SEE:What is quantum computing? Everything you need to know about the strange world of quantum computers

The internship culminates in them presenting their work to a large section of the company. "Typically, we'll speak to them at the beginning and get a sense of what their interests are, and then we'll match that to a company need we have," says Edmondson.

"They'll often say, 'I don't know anything about quantum' or 'I've never worked in quantum,' and we have to reassure them and say 'that's completely fine, we're happy to teach you that when you come here.' That's quite exciting to them."

Liscouski too believes that deep quantum expertise isn't necessarily a requirement for enterprises to begin taking advantage of quantum computing, although he acknowledges that not all companies have the resources to offer comprehensive training programmes. "It's very hard for small companies and it's very hard for medium-sized companies because you don't have that luxury of taking 10% of your workforce out and putting them in training for a period of time," he says.

"Typically, you hire people because you need them now, not because you need them in six months."

One alternative is to target students at university, college, or even school: something that QCI previously offered with its quantum computing clubs, where participants learn to use the company's software, Qatalyst.

"We're moving into actually the academic instructional program, where professors are using our software as part of their curriculum, and we've got a whole curriculum development programme for that," says Liscouski.

"We're trying to push this down to the lowest common denominator in terms of who can access it. We're even trying to get into high schools to help that workforce development."

Qatalyst is a quantum application accelerator that enables end users to transform real-world problems into quantum-ready requests, and then it processes those requests on a combination of classical computers and cloud-based quantum processors, including Ion-Q, D-Wave, and Rigetti.

SEE:Quantum computing: Getting it ready for business

It enables businesses to make use of quantum applications without needing to have their own quantum computers or specialists.

"It's intended to try to put that technology in the hands of folks who are trying to solve business problems without having to be quantum programmers," says Liscouski.

"Our focus on our platform and the development that we've done to connect to any number of quantum platforms, is to disintermediate, or de-emphasise, the need for this high-end talent that's going to make a program run on a quantum computer."

In many ways, QCI proposes a technical solution to a shortage of specialist skills -- although Liscouski acknowledges that technology on its own is not the be-all to end-all. "We still have this shortcoming of all of this talent that's going to make this stuff work at scale," he adds.

"Quantum programmes are different than classical programmes. The way you look at a problem classically is different to the way you look at a problem from a quantum point of viewThinking about those problems requires a different level of thinking than classical computers."

Given the scant interest in technology careers shown by Generation Z, outreach is going to play a significant role in putting burgeoning, next-generation technologies like quantum computing on their radars undoubtedly the first step to addressing any skills gaps.

Edmondson says tech organizations need to become involved in attracting young people at a grassroots level within schools, as well as getting more creative in how they portray opportunities in the tech sector. "It's definitely a responsibility of businesses to try to nurture the talent pool coming forward and undertake outreach that will assist with that and that's just getting young people excited about things," she says.

SEE:Tech jobs have an image problem, and it's making the skills shortage worse

"We set up a lab in Spitalfields Market in London in a huge shipping container and were giving live demonstrations and experiments. People would come in and we'd talk to them about what we were doing and get them excited. That's relatively small-scale right now, but if somebody goes away and because of that becomes excited to learn something or do a new subject, that's a win."

Liscouski says that exposure to new technologies from an early age will also play an important role in equipping the next-generation workforce with key digital skills and have them working on real-world problems. "I think there has to be either post-high school training capability, or post-college training capability, or colleges have to extend and think more broadly about what they're preparing students to do," he adds.

"Because, at the end of the day, quantum computing like any computer that we know of unless there is end-user adoption, unless there is a focus on what problems can be solved, it becomes a science experiment and is just going to stay in the research world."

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Quantum computing skills are hard to find. Here's how companies are tackling the shortage - ZDNet

PARIS, FRANCE - JUNE 25: In this photo illustration, a visual representation of the digital ... [+] Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is displayed in front of the Bitcoin course's graph on June 25, 2019 in Paris, France.

Everyone was stunned when the new mayor of New York City Eric Adams announced he was planning to receive his first three paychecks in Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency thats been dominating the financial headlines for the past year. The mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez, had already announced he would accept his first paycheck 100% in Bitcoin.

The mayoral announcements are still more signs that cryptocurrencies are no longer esoteric investments for the super-rich (or super-crooks) but have entered the financial mainstream.Back in May Deutsche Bank pronounced Bitcoin the third biggest world currency in terms of circulation. Only the euro and the U.S. dollar are bigger.

Mayor Adams himself says he intends to make New York City the center of the cryptocurrency industry.

Of course, the history of markets teaches us that what goes up must eventually come downespecially a commodity like crypto, whose rise has been fueled as much by media hype as by financial realities. Whether the current crypto boom turns out to be a crypto bubble, is impossible to say. What Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies do have going for them are two virtues.

The first is that they are not state-denominated currencies, whose heads around the world have turned out to be inept or corrupt or both.

The other is cryptocurrencys reliance on blockchain, or Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), to protect and authenticate its transactions.The on-going ledger of cryptocurrency transactions is never stored in any single location, which means no centralized version exists for a hacker to corrupt.Since the data is hosted by millions of computers simultaneously, its accessible to anyone on the internet. But its also protected because after every transaction within the shared ledger; and once all the ledgers match for every computer in the network; the transaction is encrypted with the rest in whats known as a block. The new block is then added to existing previous blocks to form a chain of blockshence the term blockchain.

All in all, blockchain is a built-in security system that prohibits a hacker or attacker from forcing open the distributed ledger without everyone knowing it.

As tech guru George Gilder argues in his book, Life After Google, using blockchain to share but also protect data poses a greater threat to Big Tech dominance of the internet than any government regulation or legislationjust as cryptocurrencies pose a useful challenge to the elites who control our state-denominated currencies.

But as always theres a catch. Blockchain is an adequate safeguard against existing cyber threats, but not against the future one posed by large-scale quantum computers.

As I mentioned in a previous column, blockchains encryption is based on Elliptical Curve Cryptography, which will be vulnerable to factorization by quantum computers that can decrypt the complex algorithms used by asymmetric encryption systems to secure almost all electronic data, including blockchain.The quantum attacker will simply look like another member of the shared ledger, in a cyber assault that will be undetectable and persistent.

CHICAGO, IL - DECEMBER 19: Traders trade VIX contracts at the Cboe Global Markets exchange ... [+] (previously referred to as CBOE Holdings, Inc.) on December 19, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois. Last week the exchange became the first in the Unites States to begin trading Bitcoin futures. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

How vulnerable will cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin be?

Consider: in 2020 the total market cap of cryptocurrencies was $330 billion. Today it is approaching $2 trillion. Institutional investors account for 63% of trading in cryptos, compared to just 10% in 2017, which means a collapse of crypto value is bound to ripple through balance sheets all around Wall Street-and around the world.

Our most recent study conducted here at the Quantum Alliance Initiative done in conjunction with the econometric firm Oxford Economics indicates that a quantum attack on crypto precipitating a 99.2% collapse of value, would inflict $1.865 Trillion in immediate losses to owners, with nearly $1.5 trillion in indirect losses to the whole economy due to that collapse.

All in all, we are looking at a $3.3 trillion blow to the U.S. economy.

Thats a calculation based on cryptos current value. By the time a large-scale quantum computer emerges, by 2030 or so, cryptocurrencies will be even more imbedded in the global financial systemand the losses even greater.

Fortunately, theres a solution. The most immediate is post-quantum cryptography, i.e., deploying algorithm-based encryption that is impenetrable to future quantum attack but also to classical attack right now. Crypto exchanges have already drawn highly damaging attacks, like the one in 2018 on Bithumb, the South Korean crypto-currency exchange, which cost $30 million, or the assault on Poly Network this past August in which cyber thieves stole more than $600 million.

BEIJING, Dec. 4, 2020 A research team including renowned Chinese quantum physicist Pan Jianwei on ... [+] Dec. 4, 2020 announced a significant computing breakthrough, achieving quantum computational advantage. (Photo by An Zhiping/Xinhua via Getty) (Xinhua/An Zhiping via Getty Images)

The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) is working on standards for post-quantum cryptography for rollout starting in 2024, but there is no reason to wait.Companies in the USA and Canada can offer solutions now, including hybrid solutions that offer the best of both post-quantum and quantum-based technologieswhile others are creating versions of DLT that incorporates quantum solutions from the start.

Make no mistake; regardless of Bitcoin and Ethereums ups and downs in the current marketseven if a Bitcoin bubble burstscrypto currencies are here to stay.Quantum-safe solutions can make sure they are stable and secure for a long time to come.

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Will Quantum Computers Burst The Bitcoin Boom? - Forbes

TEL-AVIV, Nov. 12, 2021 Classiq, which provides a breakthrough Quantum Algorithm Design platform, announced today that it is collaborating with the Fraunhofer Institute, the leading organization for applied research in Europe, as well as other major academic centers, on the development of software for industrial use of quantum computers.

The SEQUOIA Project, part of the Competence Center Quantum Computing Baden-Wrttemberg, focuses on the software engineering of industrial hybrid quantum applications and algorithms. The project is researching, developing, and testing new methods, tools, and procedures for quantum computing in order to enable future industrial use. It includes the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO, then Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA, the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics IAF, the University of Tubingen, the FZI Research Center, and the University of Stuttgart with the institutes IAAS and HLRS.

The SEQUOIA project focuses on three central aspects with the main results:

The quantum application center with applications and algorithms, e.g. for manufacturing, production, logistics, energy, and engineering.

The quantum software component kit as the basis for the implementation of application components, algorithms, hybrid quantum-classical solutions, and demonstrators. The quantum software engineering model with its own methods, procedures, technologies, and experiences from the project.

We are pleased for the opportunity to collaborate with the Fraunhofer Institute on groundbreaking software work for the benefit of industrial customers, says Shai Lev, Head of Business Development and Partnerships at Classiq, this collaboration leverages the unique abilities of Classiq and Fraunhofer, two leaders in their fields.

Specifically, Classiq would work within the SEQUOIA framework and with the SEQUOIA partners on two main problems:

Solving mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problems with state-of-the art (gate-based) quantum computers. MILP problems are a special class of linear programming problems that is used for production planning and scheduling, optimization of cellular and telecommunications networks, and more.

Solving coupled partial differential equations with the Harrow Hassidim Lloyd (HHL) quantum algorithm. These are applicable to numerous problems such as fluid flow, electrodynamics, and more.

We welcome Classiq into the Sequoia partnership, says Dr. ChristianTutschku, from the Fraunhofer Institute. We are looking forward to work with the Classiq team on novel methods of generating quantum algorithms.

About Classiq

Quantum is disrupting computing. Classiqs Quantum Algorithm Design platform is revolutionizing quantum software development. Forward-thinking companies use our platform to solve real-world problems with quantum circuits that could not be created otherwise. Our patented breakthrough technology automatically transforms high-level functional models into optimized quantum circuits for a wide range of back-end systems, turning months into minutes of work and making it possible to harness the true power of todays andtomorrows computers.To learn more, follow Classiq onLinkedIn,TwitterorYouTubeor visitwww.classiq.io.

Source: Classiq

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Classiq to Collaborate with The Fraunhofer Institute and other Leading Universities on New Methods for Industrial Quantum Use - HPCwire

LEESBURG, Va., Nov. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Quantum Computing Inc. (Nasdaq: QUBT), a leader in bridging the power of classical and quantum computing, announced that its Qatalyst ready-to-run quantum software was selected as one of three finalists for the second and final round of the BMW Group and Amazon Web Services (AWS) Quantum Computing Challenge for the Vehicle Sensor Placement use case.

The Quantum Computing Challenge invited the quantum community to apply innovations in quantum computing to real world problems in industrial applications. The use case problems presented in the challenge represent critical commercial applications that demonstrate the real-world value of quantum computing.

BMW stated that its goal with the challenge is to tap into additional innovative power, inspire new thinking, and create opportunities for quantum builders to work with BMW on meaningful business problems.

The Vehicle Sensor Placement use case challenges participants to find optimal configurations of sensors for a given vehicle so that it can reliably detect obstacles in different driving scenarios using quantum computing or nature-inspired optimization approaches. The number of sensors per car is expected to increase significantly as autonomous driving becomes more common. Vehicles need sensors to gather data from as large a portion of their surroundings as possible, but each sensor adds additional costs, so optimizing the sensor placement uses genetic algorithms. The goal of the challenge is to use quantum computing techniques to optimize the positions of sensors, enabling maximum coverage while keeping costs to a minimum.

This Challenge is yet another step in showcasing quantum computings potential for commercial applications and real-world business problem solving, said Bob Liscouski, CEO of QCI. We are pleased that we have been selected to participate in the final level of competition, and our team will work hard to demonstrate the power of Qatalyst. Regardless of the final outcome, we believe that the applications for quantum computing will significantly increase over the coming years, and QCI is well positioned to be a key player.

About Quantum Computing Inc. Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI) (Nasdaq: QUBT) is focused on accelerating the value of quantum computing for real-world business solutions. The companys flagship product, Qatalyst, is the first software to bridge the power of classical and quantum computing, hiding complexity and empowering SMEs to solve complex computational problems today. QCIs expert team in finance, computing, security, mathematics and physics has over a century of experience with complex technologies; from leading edge supercomputing innovations, to massively parallel programming, to the security that protects nations. Connect with QCI on LinkedIn and @QciQuantum on Twitter. For more information about QCI, visit http://www.quantumcomputinginc.com.

About the BMW Group Quantum Computing Challenge The BMW Group Quantum Computing Challengeis open to participants from research groups and companies worldwide. The challenge is organized into two rounds. In the first round, participants need to submit a well-documented concept proposal for one of four use case challenges. In the second and final round, teams with the top three submissions in each use case will be asked to build out their solutions. The final, virtual presentation to the competitions judging panel, including domain experts from BMW and AWS will take place in December. The winners will be announced at theQ2B quantum computing industry conference(Dec. 79).

Important Cautions Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements as defined within Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. By their nature, forward-looking statements and forecasts involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that will occur in the near future. Those statements include statements regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of Quantum Computing (Company), and members of its management as well as the assumptions on which such statements are based. Prospective investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, and that actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements.

The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect changed conditions. Statements in this press release that are not descriptions of historical facts are forward-looking statements relating to future events, and as such all forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Statements may contain certain forward-looking statements pertaining to future anticipated or projected plans, performance and developments, as well as other statements relating to future operations and results. Any statements in this press release that are not statements of historical fact may be considered to be forward-looking statements. Words such as may, will, expect, believe, anticipate, estimate, intends, goal, objective, seek, attempt, aim to, or variations of these or similar words, identify forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those described in Item 1A in the Companys Annual Report on Form 10-K, which is expressly incorporated herein by reference, and other factors as may periodically be described in the Companys filings with the SEC.

Qatalyst is the trademark of Quantum Computing Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Company Contact: Robert Liscouski, CEO Quantum Computing, Inc. +1 (703) 436-2161 Email Contact

Investor Relations Contact: Ron Both or Grant Stude CMA Investor Relations +1 (949) 432-7566 Email Contact

Media Relations Contact: Bob Geller Fusion Public Relations +1 (917) 816-0562 qci@fusionpr.com

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QCI Qatalyst Selected by BMW Group and Amazon Web Services - GlobeNewswire

COMPUTING

Two of Worlds Biggest Quantum Computers Made in China Charles Q. Choi | IEEE Spectrum scientists in China have tested two different quantum computers on what they say are more challenging tasks than [Googles] Sycamore faced and showed faster results. They note their work points to an unambiguous quantum computational advantage.i

Alternative Rocket Builder SpinLaunch Completes First Test Flight Michael Sheetz | CNBC The company is developing a launch system that uses kinetic energy as its primary method to get off the groundwith a vacuum-sealed centrifuge spinning the rocket at several times the speed of sound before releasing. This is about building a company and a space launch system that is going to enter into the commercial markets with a very high cadence and launch at the lowest cost in the industry, SpinLaunch CEO Jonathan Yaney told CNBC.

Scientists Build Tiny Robot That Could Deliver Drugs With Amazing Accuracy Julian Dossett | CNET [A] team of scientists at [ETH Zurich] has built a microrobot thats inspired by the movement of starfish larva. Their yet-to-be-named robot measures just a quarter of a millimeter across and swims through liquid by moving tiny surface hairs, or cilia, found on all kinds of microorganisms, including newborn starfish.

Wind and Solar Could Meet 85 Percent of Current Electricity Needs K. Holt | Engadget Windandsolar powercould meet around 85 percent of US electricity needs, according to a paper published inNature Communications. Batteries, capacity overbuilding and other storage options could increase that figure. A blend of wind and solar power should be enough to meet most of the current energy needs in advanced, industrialized nations, according to the study.

An E. Coli Biocomputer Solves a Maze by Sharing the Work Siobhan Roberts | MIT Technology Review this multitalented bacterium has a new trick: it can solve a classic computational maze problem using distributed computingdividing up the necessary calculations among different types of genetically engineered cells. This neat feat is a credit to synthetic biology, which aims to rig up biological circuitry much like electronic circuitry and to program cells as easily as computers.

Lidar Uncovers Hundreds of Lost Maya and Olmec Ruins Kiona N. Smith | Wired Over the last several years, lidar surveys have revealedtens of thousands of irrigation channels, causeways, and fortresses across Maya territory, which now spans the borders of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. Infrared beams can penetrate dense foliage to measure the height of the ground, which often reveals features like long-abandoned canals or plazas.The results have shown that Maya civilization was more extensive, and more densely populated, than we previously realized.

The Long Search for a Computer That Speaks Your Mind Adam Rogers | Wired The trick is to use data from the brain to synthesize speech in real time so users can practice and the machine can learn. New brain computer interface systems are getting there. The endgame, probably half a decade away, will be some unification of accuracy and intelligibility with real-time audio. Thats the common direction all of the groups doing this are going towarddoing it in real time, Anumanchipalli says.i

AR Is Where the Real Metaverse Is Going to Happen Steven Levy | Wired iOur overarching goal is to help bring the metaverse to life, Mark Zuckerberg told his workforce in June. [Niantic CEO John] Hanke hates this idea. Hes read all the science fiction books and seen all the films that first imagined the metaverseall great fun, and allwrong. He believes that his vision, unlikevirtual reality, will make the real world better without encouraging people to totally check out of it.

Image Credit: Shubham Dhage / Unsplash

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Quantum Software Market Size by Top Companies, Trends by Types and Application, Forecast to 2028 | Origin Quantum Computing Technology, D Wave, IBM,...

In a decade and a half, Nvidia has come a long way from its early days as a provider of graphics chips for personal computers and other consumer devices.

Jensen Huang, Nvidia co-founder and chief executive officer, put his sights on the datacenter, pushing GPUs as a way of accelerating HPC applications and the CUDA software development environment as a way of making that happen. Five years later, Huang declared artificial intelligencethe future of computing and that Nvidia would not only enable that, but bet the company on this being the future of software development that AI-enhanced everything would be, in fact, the next platform.

The company has continued to evolve, expanding its hardware and software capabilities aimed at meeting the demands of an ever-changing IT landscape that now includes multiple clouds and the fast-growing edge and, Huang expects, a virtual world of digital twins and avatars, and all of this dependent on the companys technologies.

Nvidia has not been a point product provider for some time, but is now a full-stack platform vendor for this new computing world.

Accelerated computing starts with Nvidia CUDA general-purpose programmable GPUs, Huang said during his keynote address at the companys virtual GTC 2021 event this week. The magic of accelerated computing comes from the combination of CUDA, the acceleration libraries of algorithms that speed-up applications and the distributed computing systems and software that scale processing across an entire datacenter.

Nvidia has been advancing CUDA and expanding the surrounding ecosystem for it for more than fifteen years.

We optimize across the full stack, iterating between GPU, acceleration libraries, systems, and applications continuously, all the while expanding the reach of our platform by adding new application domains that we accelerate, he said. With our approach, end users experience speedups through the life of the product. It is not unusual for us to increase application performance by many X-factors on the same chip over several years. As we accelerate more applications, our network of partners see growing demand for Nvidia platforms. Starting from computer graphics, the reach of our architecture has reached deep into the worlds largest industries. We start with amazing chips, but for each field of science, industry and application, we create a full stack.

To illustrate that, Huang pointed to the more than 150 software development kits that target a broad range of industries, from design to life sciences, and at GTC announced 65 new or updated SDKs touching on such areas as quantum computing, cybersecurity, and robotics. The number of developers using Nvidia technologies has grown to almost three million, increasing six-fold over the past five years. In addition, CUDA has been downloaded 30 million times over 15 years, including seven million times last year.

Our expertise in full-stack acceleration and datacenter-scale architectures lets us help researchers and developers solve problems at the largest scales, he said. Our approach to computing is highly energy-efficient. The versatility of architecture lets us contribute to fields ranging from AI to quantum physics to digital biology to climate science.

That said, Nvidia is not without its challenges. The companys $40 billion bid for Arm is no sure thing, with regulators from the UK and Europe saying they want to take a deeper look at the possible market impacts the deal would create and Qualcomm leading opposition to the proposed acquisition. In addition, the competition in GPU-accelerated computing is heating up, with AMD advancing its capabilities we recently wrote about the companys Aldebaran Instinct MI200 GPU accelerator and Intel last week saying that it expects the upcoming Aurora supercomputer will scale beyond 2 exaflops due in large part to a better-than-expected performance by its Ponte Vecchio Xe HPC GPUs.

Still, Nvidia sees its future in creating the accelerated-computing foundation for the expansion of AI, machine learning and deep learning into a broad array of industries, as illustrated by the usual avalanche of announcements coming out of GTC. Among the new libraries was ReOpt, which is aimed finding the shortest and most efficient routes for getting products and services to their destinations, which can save companies time and money in last-mile delivery efforts.

CuQuantum is another library for creating quantum simulators to validate research in the field while the industry builds the first useful quantum computers. Nvidia has built a cuQuantum DGX appliance for speeding up quantum circuit simulations, with the first accelerated quantum simulator coming to Googles Cirq framework coming in the first quarter 2022. Meanwhile, cuNumeric is aimed at accelerating NumPy workloads, scaling from one GPU to multi-node clusters.

Nvidias new Quantum-2 interconnect (which has nothing to do with quantum computing) is a 400 Gb/sec InfiniBand platform that comprises the Quantum-2 switch, the ConnectX-7 SmartNIC, the BlueField 3 DPU, and features like performance isolation, a telemetry-based congestion-control system and 32X higher in-switch processing for AI training. In addition, nanosecond timing will enable cloud datacenters to get into the telco space by hosting software-defined 5G radio services.

Quantum-2 is the first networking platform to offer the performance of a supercomputer and the shareability of cloud computing, Huang said. This has never been possible before. Until Quantum-2, you get either bare-metal high-performance or secure multi-tenancy. Never both. With Quantum-2, your valuable supercomputer will be cloud-native and far better utilized.

The 7 nanometer InfiniBand switch chip holds 57 billion transistors similar to Nvidias A100 GPU and has 64 ports running at 400 Gb/sec or 128 ports running at 200 Gb/sec. A Quantum-2 system can connect up to 2,048 ports, as compared to the 800 ports with Quantum-1. The switch is sampling now and comes with options for the ConnectX-7 SmartNIC sampling in January or BlueField 3 DPU, which will sample in May.

BlueField DOCA 1.2 is a suite of cybersecurity capabilities that Huang said will make BlueField an even more attractive platform for building a zero-trust architecture by offloading infrastructure software that is eating up as much as 30 percent of CPU capacity. In addition, Nvidias Morpheus deep-learning cybersecurity platform uses AI to monitor and analyze data from users, machines and services to detect anomalies and abnormal transactions.

Cloud computing and machine learning are driving a reinvention of the datacenter, Huang said. Container-based applications give hyperscalers incredible abilities to scale out, allowing millions to use their services concurrently. The ease of scale out and orchestration comes at a cost: east-west network traffic increased incredibly with machine-and-machine message passing and these disaggregated applications open many ports inside the datacenter that need to be secured from cyberattack.

Nvidia has bolstered its Triton Inferencing Server with new support for the Arm architecture; the system already supported Nvida GPUs and X86 chips from Intel and AMD. In addition, version 2.15 of Triton also can run multiple GPU and multi-node inference workloads, which Huang called arguably one of the most technically challenging runtime engines the world has ever seen.

As these models are growing exponentially, particularly in new use cases, theyre often getting too big for you to run on a single CPU or even a single server, Ian Buck, vice president and general manager of Nvidias Tesla datacenter business, said during a briefing with journalists. Yet the demands [and] the opportunities for these large models want to be delivered in real time. The new version of Triton actually supports distributed inference. We take the model and we split it across multiple GPUs and multiple servers to deliver that to optimize the computing to deliver the fastest possible performance of these incredibly large models.

Nvidia also unveiled NeMo Megatron, a framework for training large language models (LLMs) that have trillions of parameters. NeMo Megatron can be used for such jobs as language translation and compute program writing, and it leverages the Triton Inference Server. Nvidia last month unveiled Megatron 530B, a language mode with 530 billion parameters.

The recent breakthrough of large language models is one of the great achievements in computer science, Huang said. Theres exciting work being done in self-supervised multi-modal learning and models that can do tasks that it was never trained on called zero-shot learning. Ten new models were announced last year alone. Training LLMs is not for the faint of heart. Hundred-million-dollar systems, training trillion-parameter models on petabytes of data for months requires conviction, deep expertise, and an optimized stack.

A lot of time at the event was spent on Nvidias Omniverse platform, the virtual environment introduced last year that the company believes will be a critical enterprise tool in the future. Skeptics point to avatars and the like in suggesting that Omniverse is little more than a second coming of Second Life. In responding to a question, Buck said there are two areas where Omniverse is catching on in the enterprise.

The first is digital twins virtual representations of machines or systems that recreate an environment like the work were doing in embedded and robotics and other places to be able to simulate virtual worlds, actually simulate the products that are being built in a virtual environment and be able to prototype them entirely with Omniverse. A virtual setting allows the product development to happen in a way that has been before remotely, virtually around the world.

The other is in the commercial use of virtual agents this is where the AI-based avatars can come in to help with call centers and similar customer-facing tasks.

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Nvidia Declares That It Is A Full-Stack Platform - The Next Platform