Commentary and a selection of the most important recent news, articles, and papers about Quantum.
Today’s Brief Commentary
The Supercomputing SC24 conference is this week in Atlanta, so many quantum computing vendors used the occasion to make announcements. That’s why the Quantum Computing section in this newsletter is longer than usual. The superconducting modality is represented most, but trapped ions and neutral atoms make strong showings.
The Q2B Silicon Valley (Q2B SV) conference is the second week of December, so I expect vendors will make their remaining significant 2024 quantum announcements there. Be careful: come January 1, anything you told the world about in November or December will be last year’s news. Save something to start 2025 strongly. It’s even better if that news puts your competitors back on their heels for the rest of the year.
I did not attend SC24 but will attend Q2B SV and speak on Thursday, December 12. My talk is cheerfully called “Are We Accelerating toward Practical Quantum Advantage, or Are We Languishing with Toy Computers for Toy Problems?”. My attitude about quantum computing is that we should be optimistic and realistic.
If you are a vendor, academic, policy maker, investor, quantum end user, or conference organizer who will be at Q2B SV and would like to speak with me, send me a message on LinkedIn.
Finally, I’ve been reading a lot of quantum press releases lately and so, for fun, I provide this template for the first sentence of your announcement:
[YOUR COMPANY NAME], a world leader in [YOUR VERY SPECIFIC QUANTUM TECH], announces an industry first result in [YOUR VERY SPECIFIC RESULT], significantly shortening the time until we reach quantum advantage.
ChatGPT did even better:
[YOUR COMPANY NAME] proudly announces a groundbreaking achievement with the launch of our industry-first quantum product, setting a new world record and solidifying our position as the global leader in [YOUR VERY SPECIFIC QUANTUM TECH]. This innovation redefines the possibilities in quantum technology, delivering unparalleled performance and capabilities that mark a historic milestone for the industry and our customers worldwide.
Post-Quantum Cryptography and Security
Practical quantum tokens without quantum memories and experimental tests | npj Quantum Information
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41534-022-00524-4
Authors: Kent, Adrian; Lowndes, David; Pitalúa-García, Damián; and Rarity, John
Commentary:
This 2022 paper is background for the Quantinuum and Mitsui announcement below.(Friday, March 11, 2022) “Unforgeable quantum money tokens were the first invention of quantum information science, but remain technologically challenging as they require quantum memories and/or long-distance quantum communication. More recently, virtual “S-money” tokens were introduced. These are generated by quantum cryptography, do not require quantum memories or long-distance quantum communication, and yet in principle guarantee many of the security advantages of quantum money. Here, we describe implementations of S-money schemes with off-the-shelf quantum key distribution technology, and analyse security in the presence of noise, losses, and experimental imperfection. Our schemes satisfy near-instant validation without cross-checking. We show that, given standard assumptions in mistrustful quantum cryptographic implementations, unforgeability and user privacy could be guaranteed with attainable refinements of our off-the-shelf setup. We discuss the possibilities for unconditionally secure (assumption-free) implementations.”
Quantinuum together with Mitsui advance unforgeable quantum tokens over fibre network in first ever trial
(Monday, November 18, 2024) “Quantum tokens are a new financial instrument that take advantage of the properties of quantum physics to meet the robust demands of asset trading without the communication overheads required by traditional financial systems. Quantum tokens are transmitted across fibre-optic quantum key distribution (QKD) networks, which are rapidly expanding around the globe. Today’s announcement with Mitsui demonstrates growing industry recognition of quantum tokens’ potential in financial services.”
ETSI/IQC Quantum Safe Cryptography Conference 2025
https://www.etsi.org/events/2450-etsi-iqc-quantum-safe-cryptography-conference-2025
“ETSI and the Institute for Quantum Computing are thrilled to organize the 2025 edition of their joint event, the ETSI/IQC Quantum Safe Cryptography Conference. This year, the event will be hosted physically by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) on 3-5 June 2025 in Madrid (Spain).”
Quantum and AI
[2411.09131] Artificial Intelligence for Quantum Computing
https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.09131
Authors: Alexeev, Yuri; Farag, Marwa H.; Patti, Taylor L.; Wolf, Mark E.; Ares, Natalia; Aspuru-Guzik, Alán; Benjamin, Simon C.; Cai, Zhenyu; Chandani, Zohim; ; …; and Costa, Timothy
(Thursday, November 14, 2024) “Artificial intelligence (AI) advancements over the past few years have had an unprecedented and revolutionary impact across everyday application areas. Its significance also extends to technical challenges within science and engineering, including the nascent field of quantum computing (QC). The counterintuitive nature and high-dimensional mathematics of QC make it a prime candidate for AI’s data-driven learning capabilities, and in fact, many of QC’s biggest scaling challenges may ultimately rest on developments in AI. However, bringing leading techniques from AI to QC requires drawing on disparate expertise from arguably two of the most advanced and esoteric areas of computer science. Here we aim to encourage this cross-pollination by reviewing how state-of-the-art AI techniques are already advancing challenges across the hardware and software stack needed to develop useful QC – from device design to applications. We then close by examining its future opportunities and obstacles in this space.”
Quantum Computing
Microsoft, Quantinuum combine HPC, AI, quantum to solve real-world chemistry problem
Author: Linnea Ahlgren
Commentary:
This is an older article from September, but I include it to complement the IonQ / NVIDIA and Microsoft / Atom Computing announcements in November.(Tuesday, September 10, 2024) “Microsoft also used two logical qubits on Quantinuum’s H1 machine integrated with artificial intelligence and cloud high-performance computing (HPC) to solve a real-world chemistry problem, namely a case study on catalytic reactions producing chiral molecules.”
Atlantic Quantum and MIT receive $1.8m to develop superconducting quantum computers for the Air Force – DCD
(Sunday, November 17, 2024) “Atlantic Quantum has received a contract from the US Air Force to develop a quantum computer based on fluxonium qubits. The company has been given a $1.8 million Phase II STTR grant from AFWERX, the innovation arm of the US Department of the Air Force (DAF).”
ORNL Adds IQM Resonance Quantum Cloud Service to Its Quantum Computing User Program
(Monday, November 18, 2024) “IQM Quantum Computers (IQM), a global leader in designing, building, and selling superconducting quantum computers, today announced that its quantum cloud service ‘IQM Resonance’ will be available to Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the largest U.S. Department of Energy science and energy laboratory, for accelerating research.”
IonQ Uses NVIDIA CUDA-Q Platform to Demonstrate an End-to-End Quantum-Classical Workflow
Author: Matt Swayne
(Monday, November 18, 2024) “IonQ demonstrated an end-to-end hybrid quantum-classical workflow, integrating its quantum hardware with NVIDIA’s CUDA-Q.”
Microsoft and Atom Computing offer a commercial quantum machine with the largest number of entangled logical qubits on record
Author: Krysta Svore
Commentary:
This result doubles the number of logical qubits that Microsoft and Quantinuum announced in September.(Tuesday, November 19, 2024) “Microsoft and Atom Computing have made rapid progress in reliable quantum computing by creating and entangling 24 logical qubits made from neutral atoms—they have also demonstrated the ability to detect and correct errors, and perform computation, on 28 logical qubits. Together, the companies are offering a reliable quantum machine built with these state-of-the-art logical qubits and Microsoft’s qubit-virtualization system, and integrated with Azure Elements. This comprehensive package is available to order today with delivery in 2025. The results reported here showcase the advances being made toward scientific quantum advantage, which will require not only reliable quantum computation, but also integration with AI and high-performance computing.”
Alice & Bob Supercharge Quantum Simulations with Dynamiqs by Integrating with Accelerated Computing – Alice & Bob
https://alice-bob.com/newsroom/alice-bob-supercharge-quantum-simulations-with-dynamiqs/
(Tuesday, November 19, 2024) “Alice & Bob, a global leader in the race for fault-tolerant quantum computing, has announced the release of Dynamiqs, a pioneering quantum simulation library. Dynamiqs integrates NVIDIA accelerated computing, driving quantum simulations beyond state-of-the-art levels of performance and setting the stage for major breakthroughs in quantum research.
The team composed by researchers from Alice & Bob, University of Sherbrooke, Yale University, INRIA, Ecole de Mines, and ENS, recognized the need for a disruption in the quantum simulation space, leading to the creation of Dynamiqs.”
Quantum Computing – Technical
[2411.10406] How to Build a Quantum Supercomputer: Scaling Challenges and Opportunities
https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.10406
Commentary:
Note how many authors from HPE are listed on this one. Are they fully back in the quantum game?(Friday, November 15, 2024) “In the span of four decades, quantum computation has evolved from an intellectual curiosity to a potentially realizable technology. Today, small-scale demonstrations have become possible for quantum algorithmic primitives on hundreds of physical qubits and proof-of-principle error-correction on a single logical qubit. Nevertheless, despite significant progress and excitement, the path toward a full-stack scalable technology is largely unknown. There are significant outstanding quantum hardware, fabrication, software architecture, and algorithmic challenges that are either unresolved or overlooked. These issues could seriously undermine the arrival of utility-scale quantum computers for the foreseeable future. Here, we provide a comprehensive review of these scaling challenges. We show how the road to scaling could be paved by adopting existing semiconductor technology to build much higher-quality qubits, employing system engineering approaches, and performing distributed quantum computation within heterogeneous high-performance computing infrastructures. These opportunities for research and development could unlock certain promising applications, in particular, efficient quantum simulation/learning of quantum data generated by natural or engineered quantum systems. To estimate the true cost of such promises, we provide a detailed resource and sensitivity analysis for classically hard quantum chemistry calculations on surface-code error-corrected quantum computers given current, target, and desired hardware specifications based on superconducting qubits, accounting for a realistic distribution of errors. Furthermore, we argue that, to tackle industry-scale classical optimization and machine learning problems in a cost-effective manner, distributed quantum-assisted probabilistic computing with custom-designed accelerators should be considered as a complementary path toward scalability.”
[2411.11822v1] Logical computation demonstrated with a neutral atom quantum processor
https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.11822v1
Commentary:
This is the technical paper from Microsoft and Atom Computing on their 24 logical qubit result.(Monday, November 18, 2024) “Transitioning from quantum computation on physical qubits to quantum computation on encoded, logical qubits can improve the error rate of operations, and will be essential for realizing valuable quantum computational advantages. Using a neutral atom quantum processor with 256 qubits, each an individual Ytterbium atom, we demonstrate the entanglement of 24 logical qubits using the distance-two [[4,2,2]] code, simultaneously detecting errors and correcting for lost qubits. We also implement the Bernstein-Vazirani algorithm with up to 28 logical qubits encoded in the [[4,1,2]] code, showing better-than-physical error rates. We demonstrate fault-tolerant quantum computation in our approach, guided by the proposal of Gottesman (2016), by performing repeated loss correction for both structured and random circuits encoded in the [[4,2,2]] code. Finally, since distance-two codes can correct qubit loss, but not other errors, we show repeated loss and error correction using the distance-three [[9,1,3]] Bacon-Shor code. These results begin to clear a path for achieving scientific quantum advantage with a programmable neutral atom quantum processor.”
