News Brief

The German Free State of Bavaria will work with the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft and the Technical University of Munich to perform research, development, and education and training in quantum science and technology. Of the €300 million, they plan on spending €120 million ($145M USD) in 2021 and 2022. Additional funds may also come from the German federal government as part of the country's €2 billion stimulus package to support the development of quantum technology in Germany. As a part of this program a Centre for Quantum Computing and Quantum Technologies (ZQQ) [...]

The consortium was formed so that independent companies working on different parts of the stack can collaborate to ensure that different building blocks of a quantum computer can interface smoothly. This will allow quantum computer manufacturers to easily integrate subsystems. Members of the consortium include Orange QS, an integrated quantum system provider, Qblox, a quantum control stack provider, Delft Circuits, a cryogenic I/O quantum hardware provider, and Qu & Co, a developer of quantum algorithms for industry-relevant quantum advantage. Additional information is available in the news release available here. January 15, 2021

The round was led by China Internet Investment Fund with additional participating from Guoxin Fund, CICC Qizhi, Chengdu Industrial Investment, CCB International, Zhongke Yucheng, Zhongtian Fortune, and Pangu Turing. Origin Quantum, established in September 2017 and based in Heifei, China, is developing quantum computers based upon both superconducting and silicon dot technology. A 6 qubit superconducting quantum processor was put on the cloud and made available in September 2020. For more on this announcement, you can view a news release (in Chinese) on the Origin Quantum website here and a summary provided by the Hefei National High-tech Industry Development Zone and [...]

Founded in 1885, Boehringer Ingelheim is one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies and the largest private one. They are headquartered in Ingelheim am Rhein, Germany and employ over 47,700 people. The company has established a three year partnership with Google Quantum to research and implement use cases for quantum computing in pharmaceutical R&D, including molecular dynamics simulations. Boehringer Ingelheim's newly established Quantum Lab and Google will work to combine Boehringer Ingelheim's expertise in the field of computer-aided drug design and in silico modeling with Google’s expertise in quantum computers and algorithms. Computational chemistry for drug discovery and materials simulation is thought [...]

One of the largest electronics related trade shows is the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) normally held every January in Las Vegas, Nevada. For 2021, this show is being held virtually. As part of the event, CES has an CES Innovation Awards program which is an annual competition honoring outstanding design and engineering in consumer technology products. The program recognizes honorees in a multitude of consumer technology product categories and distinguishes the highest rated in each. For 2021, the Qblox Cluster product was chosen as an Honoree in the Embedded Technologies category. Cluster is used in the quantum control stack to provide [...]

 Earlier this year, ColdQuanta was awarded a contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a scalable, cold-atom-based quantum computing hardware and software platform based upon its cold atom Quantum Core technology that can demonstrate quantum advantage on real-world problems. ParityQC is providing crucial support for this project with its ParityQC architecture, a blueprint for next generation quantum computers to solve optimization problems, and ParityOS, the operating system to run quantum algorithms on the architecture. The companies believe that by using the ParityQC architecture they will be able to compile optimization problems with an order of magnitude fewer gate operations [...]

Atos announced this QLM-E quantum simulator last June and the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) will be the first external installation for the device. It offers up to 12 times the performance of the previous QLM through the use of NVIDIA GPUs instead of general purpose microprocessors. The device will be integrated with the Irish National supercomputer ‘Kay’ at ICHEC and equipped with a variety of quantum software programming tools. The Atos QLM E will also be used in the 'NEASQC' project, in the €1 bn European flagship quantum initiative, of which Ireland is a partner. In addition to providing [...]

The processor is code-named Yukon and will use a superconducting gate-based technology. With teams based in Montreal and Waterloo, they provide a complete suite of hardware and software (including novel superconducting quantum processors, control electronics and cryogenics systems) to deliver turn-key superconducting quantum computers. For more about this announcement, you can read Anyon's news release here. December 16, 2020

The funds are being provided by the Center for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI) of the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain. Along with collaborators Gloin, Madrija,  University Institute of Biosanitary Research of Extremadura (INUBE), University of Extremadura (UEx) and the University of Castilla La Mancha (UCLM), they will conduct research using quantum computing to investigate the correlation among the genetic variables, drug consumption and other variables related to the health history of the elderly patients. The project started in August 2020 and is expected to finish in December 2023. The goal of the research is to help the medical community find ways of [...]

The funding will be over a five year period and supplied by Taiwan's Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) and Academia Sinica. As part of this project a Quantum Technology Laboratory Building over 2,000 square meters in size will be constructed between 2022 and 2024 at the southern campus of Academia Sinica in Tainan Shalun Smart Green Energy Science City. Additional information is available in a post on the website of Taiwan's Ministry of Science and Technology here, and news articles from Taiwan News and Radio Taiwan International (RTI) here and here. December 12, 2020