dougfinke

This is the largest funding that has occurred so far for non-full stack companies (i.e. companies that don’t build a full quantum computer) in the quantum space. Along with previous seed and Series A rounds this brings total funding for Quantum Machines to about $73 million. This round was led by Red Dot Capital Partners with the participation of Exor, Claridge Israel, Samsung NEXT, Valor Equity Partners, Atreides Management LP, and joined by TLV Partners, Battery Ventures, Altshuler Shaham as well as other existing investors. Yaniv Stern, Managing Partner at Red Dot Capital Partners, will join Quantum Machines’ board of directors. [...]

TensorFlow Quantum is an open source library for quantum machine learning originally released by Google in 2020. It is a follow-on to the original TensorFlow program written for classical computers that was released in 2017. It offers high-level abstractions for the design and training of both discriminative and generative quantum models under TensorFlow and supports high-performance quantum circuit simulators. It allow one to rapidly prototype quantum ML models. Version 2 contains a number of new features including bigger gate fusions, GPU CUDA support, adjoint differentiation, noisy simulations and more. An updated white paper that describes TensorFlow Quantum along with the new [...]

As we've seen recently with hurricane Ida in Louisiana, it is becoming increasingly important to optimize the performance and reliability of our energy grids. And with the increasing use of solar panels and electric cars, the energy grid is becoming more decentralized making it more of a challenge to find the best strategy to control the flow of energy in the grids. For example, energy can flow from the grid to an electric car for charging batteries, but when the car is not in use, it is also possible to flow energy from the car's battery back to the grid to [...]

We reported in June that several companies in Japan were in the process of establishing a new council to encourage the development of quantum technology in Japan and strengthen international competitiveness. They have now formally established a council with the name Quantum Strategic Industry Alliance for Revolution (Q-STAR). The current membership consists of 24 companies with an inaugural steering committee consisting of executives from Toshiba, Toyota, NEC, NTT, Hitachi, Fujitsu, and Mitsubishi Chemical. The group held their first general meeting on September 1, 2021. Key goals of this new group include the following: Investigate and research trends in quantum technologyInvestigate, research, [...]

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is adding two additional Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes to join the three institutes previously announced last year. The first is the Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Robust Quantum Simulation led by the University of Maryland with collaborators from historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) Morgan State University and North Carolina Central University. This institute will develop theoretical concepts, design innovative hardware, and provide education and training for a suite of novel simulation devices that can predict and understand quantum phenomena. The team working on this will combine expertise in computer science, engineering, and physics, the [...]

One of the challenges to scaling up quantum computers is providing all the necessary control signals to the qubits so that they can implement the needed logic gates for the particular quantum software program. This is especially true for superconducting and spin-qubit based quantum computers that need to run at 4 degrees kelvin or lower. Current implementations start with room temperature signal generation and measurement electronics that sit outside the dilution refrigerator and connect the signals to the qubits using coaxial cables that go through the dilution refrigerator to the qubits at the end. There is great concern that this approach [...]

Attention has been drawn to two quantum related patents filed by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) related to quantum technology. The first is titled VARIATION-AWARE QUBIT MOVEMENT SCHEME FOR NOISE INTERMEDIATE SCALE QUANTUM ERA COMPUTERS and was initially filed in December 2019 and published on June 17, 2021. The second is titled LOOK-AHEAD TELEPORTATION FOR RELIABLE COMPUTATION IN MULTI-SIMD QUANTUM PROCESSOR and was initially filed in February 2020 and published on August 19, 2021. AMD is one of the largest microprocessor suppliers in the world and competes fiercely with Intel for market share in the personal computing market. Although AMD has a large footprint [...]