News Brief

We had reported in September 2021 that a team from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) and other organizations had developed a 66 qubit superconducting based processor and used it to replicate and surpass Google's 2019 Quantum Supremacy experiment. They are now reporting they have upgraded the machine by adding additional control interfaces to support 176 qubits and the machine went online for public use at the end of May. Additional technical details such as coherence times, qubit fidelities etc. are not yet available. A news report from the Xinhua News Agency is available here. May 31, 2023

PQShield is a UK based company formed in 2018 that specializes in providing post-quantum cryptography products and services. They have been a leading contributor to the NIST PQC standardization project and other standards efforts and possess significant IP in both hardware and software cryptography. Their agreement with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a leading IT consulting company, will allow them to support TCS' clients wishing to migrate to post-quantum cryptography. Since TCS already engages with a great many enterprises worldwide, this agreement should help PQShield enhance the reach for its products and services. eShard is a French firm that analyzes and validates [...]

VeriQloud is a company based in Paris, France and founded in 2017 that develops several quantum communications solutions and received this funding from Quantonation and WinEquity, an investment firm that specializes in companies founded or co-founded by women entrepreneurs. VeriQloud has two announced products. The first one is called Qline which provide quantum cybersecurity at the local area level. Qline has been deployed since 2022 by Deutsche Telekom on the OpenQKD testbed network in Berlin. VeriQloud also provide HyQloud which provides hybrid classical-quantum solution for secure data storage​. Additional projects that they are engaging with using these products include France QCI [...]

The Quantum Research Institute will perform research on quantum technologies as well as expand the quantum academic curriculum at the university. It will leverage research strengths the university already possesses in the areas of quantum matter and quantum light. The $50 million in funding will be used to support both people and lab space. Twenty University of Michigan faculty fellows will join the institute with plans to recruit an addition eight new members. The co-directors of the institute will be Steven Cundiff, the Harrison M. Randall Collegiate Professor of Physics, and Mack Kira, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science. [...]

Quantum Machines and ParTec worked together to create software that will handle the complexities of having multiple HPC users accessing a hybrid classical/quantum infrastructure to run jobs. Qbridge is integrated with Quantum Machines OPX Controller and provides many different functions including scheduling classical and quantum resources, providing low latency connections between the two for hybrid workflows, allowing for dynamic circuit execution (sometimes called mid-circuit measurement) for quantum programs, QPU virtualization, and maximizing the flexibility, transparency, and usability of the stack. Qbridge is scheduled for its first installation in the second half of 2023 at the Israeli Quantum Computing Center (QCC). A press release introducing [...]

The quantum circuit utilized 39 qubits with a depth of 10 million layers to analyze the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) properties of a state-of-the-art jet engine. The complex circuit was first designed by Rolls-Royce and Classiq using Classiq's circuit synthesis software and then run using NVIDIA's A100 Tensor Core GPUs and CuQuantum software development kit. Additional information about this project can be found in a new release provided by NVIDIA which can be accessed here. May 27, 2023

The award competition is part of the UK's Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) program to develop new technologies and processes. The aim of this competition is to explore the benefit of using quantum technologies in various areas of interest for the UK Government and accelerate the adoption of quantum solutions by the public sector for the public benefit. The competition is divided into two phases. Phase 1, which will last for 3 months, will provided awards of up to £120,000 ($148K USD), inclusive of VAT and has a total budget of £2 million ($2.4M USD) for all the projects selected. After Phase 1, [...]

The qBraid SDK can transpile quantum circuits between Qiskit, Cirq, Amazon Braket, PyQuil, PyTKET and OpenQASM, and submit a jos to any IBMQ backend or Amazon Braket supported device. This includes access to 15 QPU devices from IonQ, Oxford Quantum Circuits, QuEra, Rigetti, Xanadu, and IBM, as well as 8 on-demand simulators from AWS and IBM. For those who already have AWS and IBM Quantum credentials, they can use their own and submit jobs using them. For those who don't have AWS or IBM credentials they can get an account with qBraid and submit jobs the qBraid's Quantum Jobs facility with [...]

We reported last February that Quantum Motion had received a venture funding £42 million ($50.5M USD) for continued development of their spin qubit based processors. They have now announced that the Sony Innovation Fund has joined the round. This is the first quantum investment from the Sony Investment Fund. Besides the money, Sony can provide additional assistance to Quantum Motion in the future due to their deep experience in CMOS semiconductor design and manufacturing as well as helping them gain access to the Japanese market. Quantum Motion was founded in 2017 by Professor John Morton of University College London and Professor Simon [...]

As part of a overall agreement to work together with RIKEN, a large research institute in Japan focusing on the natural sciences, on Next Generation Computing including AI and high performance computing, Intel will also be working with RIKEN on quantum computing. RIKEN will be using Intel's Quantum SDK (see our recent article describing the Intel Quantum SDK) as well as quantum chip testing. Besides their work with Intel, RIKEN is also working with Fujitsu to produce a superconducting based quantum computer with 64 qubits. Additional information is available in a press release provided by RIKEN (in Japanese) that can be [...]