dougfinke

In December 2023, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) selected five teams for their Quantum Benchmarking project with a goal of find applications that could be used to benchmark progress in quantum computing as well as perform an initial estimate of quantum hardware resources necessary to find solutions for some of these problems. The three teams focusing on benchmarks and applications were led by the University of Southern California, HRL Laboratories, and L3Harris and the two teams focusing on estimating quantum processor requirements were led by Rigetti Computing and Zapata Computing. The Phase II research will continue until March [...]

D-Wave Quantum Inc. has launched a new hybrid quantum solver for nonlinear programs. The solver, available through D-Wave’s Leap™ quantum cloud service, supports up to two million variables and constraints. It excels at handling nonlinear relationships, making it suitable for real-world problems with complex interactions between variables. This new solver will join three other solvers in D-Wave's portfolio to help users submit a problem. Each of the solvers has a strength in different types of problems and which one a user will use depends upon their specific problem. The other solvers that D-Wave has available in its Leap Cloud Service include the following: [...]

Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI) received $27.3 thousand in revenue for the period ended March 31, 2024. The bulk of the revenue was due to  professional services that utilize the Dirac-series computers and other prototype design and configuration services. Net loss for the quarter was about $6.9 million. The company ended the quarter with $6.1 million in cash and cash equivalents, an increase of about $4 million from the balance on December 31, 2023. The company raised net cash $10 million during the Q1 period through its ATM (At-the-Market) agreement with with Ascendiant Capital Markets, LLC. A chart comparing the results for [...]

Chart Showing the Steps Used in Q-CTRL's Optimization Software Q-CTRL, a leader in quantum infrastructure software, has achieved a significant milestone by solving optimization problems over four times larger than previous records using IBM quantum computers. The results show that IBM's quantum computers can outperform competitive technologies such as quantum annealers and trapped ion devices in solving complex optimization problems. This advancement redefines the expectations for achieving quantum advantage in practical applications. The new benchmarks demonstrate that Q-CTRL's performance-management infrastructure, integrated with IBM's utility-scale quantum computers, effectively mitigates hardware errors, enabling consistent and accurate solutions to large-scale optimization problems. Direct comparisons [...]

As reported earlier this year in our article titled Quantum Poker: The States of Colorado and Illinois are Betting on Quantum the states of Colorado and Illinois have both made a submission to win Phase 2 awards of about $50-$75 million from the U.S. Economic Development Administration to create a U.S. Tech Hub for quantum technology. We expect the awards to be made soon and we should note that it is also possible that neither region will win an award if the federal government decides to allocate all its Tech Hub funds for other, non-quantum, technology efforts. But to help provide [...]

Spatial correlation patterns in quasi-adiabatically prepared ground states for N = 300 qubits A team of Chinese Scientists from Tsinghua University has demonstrated success in achieving stable trapping of 512 ions in a two dimensional Wigner crystal. In addition, they have achieved quantum state measurements with single-qubit resolution across an unprecedented 300 ions, the largest number achieved to date. For more information, you can read an article published by the Xinhua news service here or read the full technical paper published by Nature titled "A site-resolved two-dimensional quantum simulator with hundreds of trapped ions" that can be accessed here. June 1, 2024

NXP Semiconductors N.V., eleQtron, and ParityQC, part of the QSea consortium of the DLR Quantum Computing Initiative (DLR QCI), have revealed the first full-stack, 10 qubit, ion-trap based quantum computer demonstrator made entirely in Germany. The quantum computer demonstrator is located in Hamburg, reinforcing the city’s role as a significant technology and research hub in Germany. It will enable early access to real quantum computing resources, allowing companies and research teams to leverage quantum computing advantages in applications such as climate modeling, global logistics, and materials sciences. The QSea I demonstrator combines eleQtron’s MAGIC hardware, ParityQC architecture, and NXP’s chip design [...]

Zurich Instruments has named Andrea Orzati as its new Chief Executive Officer. He succeeds company founder Sadik Hafizovic and will work to continue the company's progress in scaling up. Previously, he was the Vice President Sales & Marketing and Executive Board Member of sensor company Sensiron where he spent 15 years. He also has prior experience at TEQABLE AG, u-blox, and ETH Zurich. A press release announcing his joining the company has been posted on Zurich Instrument's web site here. Oxford Quantum Circuits has named Gerald Mullaly as interim CEO succeeding Dr. Ilana Wisby who helped spin the business out from Oxford [...]

One of the big challenges for achieving high performing fault tolerant quantum computers is coming up with a way of scaling the number of qubits to the hundreds of thousands or millions of qubits that will be needed to create a usable number of error corrected qubits. Although some approaches, such as quantum dots, may be able to fit a large number of qubits on one chip, they can run into other challenges such as wiring complexity and handling the heat load within the cryostat of the large number of qubits. So many researchers are looking at ways of implementing these [...]