News Brief

The grant is provided by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) for a five year research project titled "Topological Spin Qubits Based on Graphene Nanoribbons". The team will be led by Professor Jeremy Levy of the University of Pittsburgh and include others researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, Michigan State University, University of Wisconsin - Madison, Harvard University and the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. The teams approach will combine advanced “top-down” lithographic capabilities with advanced “bottoms-up” synthetic chemistry protocols, so that atomically precise graphene nanoribbons can be created and manipulated in ways that may be useful for future quantum computing [...]

Canada's Strategic Innovation Fund will be providing D-Wave with $40 million for a project to develop new quantum computers hardware and software systems. The total budget for the project is $120 million ($95.6M USD) and will create up to 200 jobs including up to 10 co-op students annually. As part of this arrangement, D-Wave will be providing access to qualified members of the Canadian quantum ecosystem to encourage development. Additional details can be found in a news release from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada that can be seen here. March 11, 2021

In Google's original paper, they noted that their Sycamore processor completed this task in 200 seconds and estimated it would take 10,000 years on the Summit supercomputer. IBM later provided a paper analysis indicating that with a different architecture that uses both RAM and hard drive space to store and manipulate the state vector, a high performance classical computer could do this in 2.5 days. Now two scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have actually performed this calculation in a period of 5 days using 60 GPU cores. They generated one million correlated bit strings using Google's circuit that had [...]

Q-CTRL will develop these technologies in coordination with Fleet Space Technologies, a nanosatellite startup and founder of the SEVEN SISTERS consortium. Q-CTRL posseses expertise in quantum control engineering and they will work to leverage this to help create small form factor sensors with enhanced robustness and autonomy to be used in uncrewed space applications. Some key potential applications include ultra-sensitve quantum-based gravity and magnetic field sensors to detect liquid water and mineral deposits. Also, very sensitive and accurate sensors can be extremely valuable in precision navigation and timing (PNT) applications to provide navigational guidance for long-endurance missions with limited telemetry contact. Q-CTRL [...]

We reported last year that IBM had established a Quantum Education and Research Initiative for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) with 13 initial members in the IBM-HBCU Quantum Center. Now they have announced 10 new members bringing the total to 23.  The new members include Alabama State University, Bowie State University, Delaware State University, Dillard University, Florida A&M University, Norfolk State University, North Carolina Central University, Tennessee State University and University of the District of Columbia. IBM’s intentions are to collaborate with these universities to broaden STEM-base opportunities for these traditionally underrepresented communities as well as advance quantum information science. [...]

D-Wave has been gradually extending access of their Leap Cloud Service to a growing list of countries, now reaching 38 including Singapore, since it was first introduced in October 2018. Users who sign up can obtain an initial one free minute of quantum processing time or up to 20 minutes of free access to D-Wave's hybrid solver services. Developers who upgrade and associate their GitHub accounts can receive this free time monthly. For enterprises and research institutions and others who may need more time, D-Wave can offer a custom plan. The Leap Cloud Service includes access to D-Wave latest Advantage machine [...]

The partnership will research the use of quantum technology to drive the identification of multi-gene biomarker discovery for oncology drug discovery.  Crown Bioscience (CrownBio) is a subsidiary of JSR Life Sciences and possesses extensive data bases and domain expertise while CQC has extensive experience in quantum computing, quantum algorithms, quantum machine learning. CQC's quantum programming suites include t|ket>, an architecture agnostic quantum software stack and EUMEN, a software package designed to facilitate computational chemistry calculations. Crown Bioscience’s parent corporation, JSR Corporation, is an investor in CQC. The companies will analyze genetic data to identify cancer treatment biomarkers and drive the next [...]

The operating system, named Origin Pilot, is the first homegrown quantum operating system in China. The company indicates that the system has a number of unique features including parallel execution of multiple quantum computing tasks, automatic qubit calibration, and unified management of quantum computing resources. The company's goal with this operating system is to make quantum computer operations more efficient and stable. It is expected that this operating system will be used with the Origin Quantum Cloud Service which they announced last year. Additional information about Origin Pilot is available on the company's website here and also in a blog posting [...]

Multiverse Computing, a quantum software company specializing in financial applications and Alpine Quantum Technology (AQT) will work together to utilize AQT's ion trap quantum computer to develop solutions for the finance industry. Multiverse is currently working with banks BBVA and Bankia with others on the way. They are based in San Sebastian, Spain and will access AQT's machine in Austria via the cloud. AQT recently described a 24 qubit room temperature ion trap computer which was developed in collaboration with the University of Innsbruck. Additional information is available in the press releases available on the AQT website here and also on [...]