Twenty-seven years before Steve Jobs unveiled a computer you could put in your pocket, physicist Paul Benioff published a paper showing it was theoretically possible to build a much more powerful system you could hide in a thimble a quantum computer.

Named for the subatomic physics it aimed to harness, the concept Benioff described in 1980 still fuels research today, including efforts to build the next big thing in computing: a system that could make a PC look in some ways quaint as an abacus.

Richard Feynman a Nobel Prize winner whose wit-laced lectures brought physics to a broad audience helped establish the field, sketching out how such systems could simulate quirky quantum phenomena more efficiently than traditional computers. So,

Quantum computing is a sophisticated approach to making parallel calculations, using the physics that governs subatomic particles to replace the more simplistic transistors in todays computers.

Quantum computers calculate using qubits, computing units that can be on, off or any value between, instead of the bits in traditional computers that are either on or off, one or zero. The qubits ability to live in the in-between state called superposition adds a powerful capability to the computing equation, making quantum computers superior for some kinds of math.

Using qubits, quantum computers could buzz through calculations that would take classical computers a loooong time if they could even finish them.

For example, todays computers use eight bits to represent any number between 0 and 255. Thanks to features like superposition, a quantum computer can use eight qubits to represent every number between 0 and 255, simultaneously.

Its a feature like parallelism in computing: All possibilities are computed at once rather than sequentially, providing tremendous speedups.

So, while a classical computer steps through long division calculations one at a time to factor a humongous number, a quantum computer can get the answer in a single step. Boom!

That means quantum computers could reshape whole fields, like cryptography, that are based on factoring what are today impossibly large numbers.

That could be just the start. Some experts believe quantum computers will bust through limits that now hinder simulations in chemistry, materials science and anything involving worlds built on the nano-sized bricks of quantum mechanics.

Quantum computers could even extend the life of semiconductors by helping engineers create more refined simulations of the quantum effects theyre starting to find in todays smallest transistors.

Indeed, experts say quantum computers ultimately wont replace classical computers, theyll complement them. And some predict quantum computers will be used as accelerators much as GPUs accelerate todays computers.

Dont expect to build your own quantum computer like a DIY PC with parts scavenged from discount bins at the local electronics shop.

The handful of systems operating today typically require refrigeration that creates working environments just north of absolute zero. They need that computing arctic to handle the fragile quantum states that power these systems.

In a sign of how hard constructing a quantum computer can be, one prototype suspends an atom between two lasers to create a qubit. Try that in your home workshop!

Quantum computing takes nano-Herculean muscles to create something called entanglement. Thats when two or more qubits exist in a single quantum state, a condition sometimes measured by electromagnetic waves just a millimeter wide.

Crank up that wave with a hair too much energy and you lose entanglement or superposition, or both. The result is a noisy state called decoherence, the equivalent in quantum computing of the blue screen of death.

A handful of companies such as Alibaba, Google, Honeywell, IBM, IonQ and Xanadu operate early versions of quantum computers today.

Today they provide tens of qubits. But qubits can be noisy, making them sometimes unreliable. To tackle real-world problems reliably, systems need tens or hundreds of thousands of qubits.

Experts believe it could be a couple decades before we get to a high-fidelity era when quantum computers are truly useful.

Predictions of when we reach so-called quantum computing supremacy the time when quantum computers execute tasks classical ones cant is a matter of lively debate in the industry.

The good news is the world of AI and machine learning put a spotlight on accelerators like GPUs, which can perform many of the types of operations quantum computers would calculate with qubits.

So, classical computers are already finding ways to host quantum simulations with GPUs today. For example, NVIDIA ran a leading-edge quantum simulation on Selene, our in-house AI supercomputer.

NVIDIA announced in the GTC keynote the cuQuantum SDK to speed quantum circuit simulations running on GPUs. Early work suggests cuQuantum will be able to deliver orders of magnitude speedups.

The SDK takes an agnostic approach, providing a choice of tools users can pick to best fit their approach. For example, the state vector method provides high-fidelity results, but its memory requirements grow exponentially with the number of qubits.

That creates a practical limit of roughly 50 qubits on todays largest classical supercomputers. Nevertheless weve seen great results (below) using cuQuantum to accelerate quantum circuit simulations that use this method.

Researchers from the Jlich Supercomputing Centre will provide a deep dive on their work with the state vector method in session E31941 at GTC (free with registration).

A newer approach, tensor network simulations, use less memory and more computation to perform similar work.

Using this method, NVIDIA and Caltech accelerated a state-of-the-art quantum circuit simulator with cuQuantum running on NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs. It generated a sample from a full-circuit simulation of the Google Sycamore circuit in 9.3 minutes on Selene, a task that 18 months ago experts thought would take days using millions of CPU cores.

Using the Cotengra/Quimb packages, NVIDIAs newly announced cuQuantum SDK, and the Selene supercomputer, weve generated a sample of the Sycamore quantum circuit at depth m=20 in record time less than 10 minutes, said Johnnie Gray, a research scientist at Caltech.

This sets the benchmark for quantum circuit simulation performance and will help advance the field of quantum computing by improving our ability to verify the behavior of quantum circuits, said Garnet Chan, a chemistry professor at Caltech whose lab hosted the work.

NVIDIA expects the performance gains and ease of use of cuQuantum will make it a foundational element in every quantum computing framework and simulator at the cutting edge of this research.

Sign up to show early interest in cuQuantum here.

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What Is Quantum Computing? | NVIDIA Blog

Let's look at example that shows how quantum computers can succeed where classical computers fail:

A supercomputer might be great at difficult tasks like sorting through a big database of protein sequences. But it will struggle to see the subtle patterns in that data that determine how those proteins behave.

Proteins are long strings of amino acids that become useful biological machines when they fold into complex shapes. Figuring out how proteins will fold is a problem with important implications for biology and medicine.

A classical supercomputer might try to fold a protein with brute force, leveraging its many processors to check every possible way of bending the chemical chain before arriving at an answer. But as the protein sequences get longer and more complex, the supercomputer stalls. A chain of 100 amino acids could theoretically fold in any one of many trillions of ways. No computer has the working memory to handle all the possible combinations of individual folds.

Quantum algorithms take a new approach to these sorts of complex problems -- creating multidimensional spaces where the patterns linking individual data points emerge. In the case of a protein folding problem, that pattern might be the combination of folds requiring the least energy to produce. That combination of folds is the solution to the problem.

Classical computers can not create these computational spaces, so they can not find these patterns. In the case of proteins, there are already early quantum algorithms that can find folding patterns in entirely new, more efficient ways, without the laborious checking procedures of classical computers. As quantum hardware scales and these algorithms advance, they could tackle protein folding problems too complex for any supercomputer.

How complexity stumps supercomputers

Proteins are long strings of amino acids that become useful biological machines when they fold into complex shapes. Figuring out how proteins will fold is a problem with important implications for biology and medicine.

A classical supercomputer might try to fold a protein with brute force, leveraging its many processors to check every possible way of bending the chemical chain before arriving at an answer. But as the protein sequences get longer and more complex, the supercomputer stalls. A chain of 100 amino acids could theoretically fold in any one of many trillions of ways. No computer has the working memory to handle all the possible combinations of individual folds.

Quantum computers are built for complexityQuantum algorithms take a new approach to these sorts of complex problems -- creating multidimensional spaces where the patterns linking individual data points emerge. Classical computers can not create these computational spaces, so they can not find these patterns. In the case of proteins, there are already early quantum algorithms that can find folding patterns in entirely new, more efficient ways, without the laborious checking procedures of classical computers. As quantum hardware scales and these algorithms advance, they could tackle protein folding problems too complex for any supercomputer.

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What is Quantum Computing? | IBM

For more than a century, IBM has been rooted in the fundamental promise of technology: We believe that when we apply science to real-world problems, we can make progress - for both business and society. And as those problems have changed over time, so have we. IBM has repeatedly reinvented itself to overcome whatever obstacles stand in the way of innovation and value for our clients.

IBM scientists and engineers have been at the heart of our relentless reinvention. They have always been guided by a core principle, to deliver innovation that matters, for our company and the world.

Our commitment to research as part of our business model means we will continue to create the technologies that our clients and the world rely upon. For example, we have led US companies for decades in the number of patents received annually. Today, it was announced IBM has achieved this milestone for IBM's total of more than 8,500 patents led the IFI Claims Patent Service 2021 rankings.29 years in a row.

We are proud of this accomplishment and our leadership. However, the number of patents we receive has never told the full story of the innovation we drive. Our priority has always been leading the frontiers of computing and its relationship to business, science, professions, and society.

I believe that today, more than ever, we need innovation to meet the demands of many of the major challenges of our time - from models to create sustainable growth, to addressing future pandemics and climate change, to enabling energy and food security. To address them, we need faster discovery, open collaboration, efficient problem solving, and the ability to push science and business into new frontiers.

This future will be powered by a blend of high-performance computing, AI, and quantum computing, all integrated through the hybrid cloud. The confluence of these technologies represents a step change in computing, and the outcomes will surpass anything we've seen before. Together, these advancements can exponentially alter the speed and scale at which we can uncover solutions to complex problems. We've come to call this accelerated discovery.

Our priority has always been leading the frontiers of computing and its relationship to business, science, professions, and society.

But this will not happen in a vacuum. Strong innovation is built on a collaborative ecosystem, a commitment to long-term investment in hard tech challenges and fundamental materials, and the implementation of an open approach.

We have a long history of putting these principles into practice, and it's in this spirit we undertook some of the most daunting hard technology challenges in 2021 - and delivered on them.

To name just a few: we worked with our partners to demonstrate the first 2 nm nanosheet technology for semiconductors, which will support up to 50 billion transistors on a chip the size of a fingernail and offer enormous gains in efficiency. We also collaborated with Samsung on the successful prototype of a chip that defies conventional semiconductor design, and lays the groundwork to achieve energy density and performance levels previously thought unattainable.

And as we lead the quest to reach practical and large-scale quantum computing, we stayed true to the ambitious roadmap we laid out in 2020 and In addition to unveiling Eagle, our 127-qubit quantum processor, and previewing the design for IBM Quantum System Two, our next-generation system that will house future quantum processors, we also introduced, Quantum Serverless, a new programming model for leveraging quantum and classical resources. Read more.delivered Eagle, our first 127-qubit processor, which will be critical to growing the nascent quantum industry IBM is pioneering.

To continue to realize a future marked by fundamental technology progress and the exploration of new scientific boundaries, we are deepening our commitment to this approach.

Building open communities for innovation

As part of our strategy, we are doubling down on our already robust and long-standing commitment to open communities. Innovation can emerge from anywhere, from a tech giant or a disruptive startup. In software, the growth of open source has redefined where innovation can come from, and how it is monetized. IBM has a long history in open source, and that continues today. Our pioneering work in serverless computing, which is quickly becoming the leading platform for the hybrid cloud industry because of the significant growth of Red Hat, is just one example of this.

We will also expand our focus to grow communities of innovation. The most successful technologies and innovations are often found when complementary institutions work together. To take one example among many, our collaboration with the The Cleveland Clinic + IBM Discovery Accelerator is a collaboration set to advance pathogen research, and foster the next-gen tech workforce for healthcare. Read more.Cleveland Clinicwill bring together IBM's technology and expertise in hybrid cloud, AI, and quantum computing to help Cleveland Clinic discover solutions to pressing issues around public health.

These sorts of collaborations will help technology to solve truly profound problems, and we hope to do so in partnership with other institutions adopting our technology, including Fraunhofer-Geselleschaft, Germany's largest research institution, the Hartree Centre, a major AI and high-performance computing research facility in the UK, and Japan's University of Tokyo and Keio University. Worldwide, we will continue to forge partnerships with the broader scientific community as we look to accelerate the pace of discovery.

Pushing discovery beyond patent filings

Moving forward, we're strengthening our companywide approach to focus our innovation efforts around the areas that matter most for our business and for society at large. This will include hybrid cloud, AI, quantum computing, systems and semiconductors, and security.

We believe these areas will have the most impact on our clients, industries, and the world. We also believe they're the ones with the greatest potential for ecosystem collaboration.

While IBM will remain an intellectual property powerhouse with one of the strongest US patent portfolios, as part of our heightened focus moving forward, we'll also take a more selective approach to patenting. We are proud of our decades-long history of topping the US patents chart, but in this new era, our position as the recipient of the most patents in any given year will not be a priority. Instead, our focus will be to prioritize growing these key technology areas of our company.

The problems the world is facing today require us to work faster than ever before. We see it as our duty to catalyze scientific progress by taking the cutting-edge technologies we're working on, scaling them, and deploying them with partners across every industry.

Innovation is the heart and soul of IBM and serves as the engine to make our clients and the world work better. We made enormous strides in the last year, and we plan to achieve even more in 2022.

Read the rest here:
International Business Machines : Building on Our History of Innovation for the Future of IBM - marketscreener.com

Nov. 15, 2021 Atos and NVIDIA today announced the Excellence AI Lab (EXAIL), which brings together scientists and researchers to help advance European computing technologies, education and research.

The labs first research projects will focus on five key areas enabled by advances in high performance computing and AI: climate research, healthcare and genomics, hybridization with quantum computing, edge AI/computer vision and cybersecurity.

Atos will develop an exascale-class BullSequana X supercomputer with NVIDIAs Arm-based Grace CPU, NVIDIAs next-generation GPU, Atos BXI Exascale Interconnect andNVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking platform.

Predicting and Addressing Climate Change

In an effort to more accurately predict climate change, researchers from Atos and NVIDIA will run new AI and deep learning models on Europes fastest supercomputer at the Jlich Supercomputing Center. Such giant-scale models can be used to predict the evolution of extreme weather events and their changing behavior due to global warming, and they will benefit greatly from exascale-class computing.

The JUWELS Booster system, based on AtosBullSequana XH2000 platform, with nearly 2.5 exaflops of AI and 3,744NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUsand NVIDIA Quantum InfiniBand networking, will help provide deeper understanding of climate change and more accurate long-term predictions of events, such as hurricanes, extreme precipitation, and heat and cold waves.

Atos is strongly committed to itsdecarbonization objectives, which are to offset all of our residual emissions by 2028 to reach net zero, and to reach the SBTi target to reduce our global carbon emissions under our control and influence by 50 percent by 2025, said Andy Grant, vice president of global sales for HPC, AI and Quantum at Atos. Many leading climate modeling centers, such asMeteo France,DKRZ, KNMI andAEMet, are using our BullSequana supercomputers to run their large weather and climate models, and the current EXAIL announcement is a clear demonstration of our commitment, one year after the creation of ourCenter of Excellence in Weather and Climate Modellingwith ECMWF.

Climate change intensifies and increases the frequency of extreme weather events that disrupt entire regions, costing governments and economies hundreds of billions each year, said Ian Buck, vice president and general manager of Accelerated Computing at NVIDIA. The goal for EXAIL is to advance vital research to address pressing global challenges surrounding climate change.

Accelerating Medical Research With HPC, Quantum and AI

Supercharging medical breakthroughs with computational genomics is revolutionizing drug discovery and healthcare.Atos Life Sciences Center of Excellencehas partnered with 40 leading institutions to leverage HPC, quantum computing and AI to advance medical imaging, genomics and pharmaceuticals. TheNVIDIA Clara healthcare application frameworkprovides supercomputing performance for genomics, healthcare imaging and computational chemistry applications.

EXAIL will harness Atos advanced computing solutions and NVIDIA Clara to help healthcare researchers and providers accelerate drug discovery and design advanced diagnostic solutions using embedded, edge, data center and cloud platforms.

Advancing Quantum Research

Quantum computing holds the potential to solve complex problems in fields like drug discovery, climate research, machine learning, logistics and finance. But much research remains before quantum computers become viable.

AtosQuantum Learning Machine, a quantum software development and simulation appliance for the coming quantum computer era, enables researchers and engineers to develop and experiment with quantum software. It will use NVIDIA GPUs to help dramatically increase the speed and scale of quantum simulations. This will speed the research in quantum algorithms, quantum information science, new quantum processor architectures and hybrid quantum-GPU system architectures.

Accelerating Computer Vision

Using Atos edge appliances, such as itsBullSequana Edgewhich runs onNVIDIA BlueField DPUs, the research teams at EXAIL will work together to accelerate computer vision and 5G wireless infrastructure. Six Atos labs around the world dedicated to computer vision will be equipped with the latestNVIDIA Fleet Command technologyfor secure deployment and management of AI applications across distributed edge infrastructure.

Advancing Zero-Trust Cybersecurity

Furthermore, the EXAIL research teams will develop a new data-center-to-edge, zero-trust cybersecurity platform leveraging theNVIDIA Morpheus open AI framework, as well as new AI models to instantly detect new cybersecurity threats.

About Atos

Atos is a global leader in digital transformation with 107,000 employees and annual revenue of over 11 billion. European number one in cybersecurity, cloud and high performance computing, the Group provides tailored end-to-end solutions for all industries in 71 countries. A pioneer in decarbonization services and products, Atos is committed to a secure and decarbonized digital for its clients. Atos is a SE (Societas Europaea), listed on Euronext Paris and included on the CAC 40 ESG and Next 20 Paris Stock Indexes. Thepurpose of Atosis to help design the future of the information space. Its expertise and services support the development of knowledge, education and research in a multicultural approach and contribute to the development of scientific and technological excellence. Across the world, the Group enables its customers and employees, and members of societies at large to live, work and develop sustainably, in a safe and secure information space.

About NVIDIA

NVIDIAs invention of the GPU in 1999 sparked the growth of the PC gaming market and has redefined modern computer graphics, high performance computing and artificial intelligence. The companys pioneering work in accelerated computing and AI is reshaping trillion-dollar industries, such as transportation, healthcare and manufacturing, and fueling the growth of many others. More information at https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/.

Source: NVIDIA

Excerpt from:
Atos and NVIDIA to Advance Climate and Healthcare Research With Exascale Computing - HPCwire

November 25, 2019 | Written by: Jan Lillelund

Categorized: Innovation | Quantum Computing

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Quantum computing is buzzing these days. However, it is a very complex topic to understand even for experienced tech professionals, professors and the brightest students. I have experienced this myself during the last few years when speaking about quantum computing at several conferences and universities. But there is a way we can understand the complex implications of how we can utilize quantum computing and how remarkably it improves our lives.

The technology will for sure solve complex problems in the future that even classical super-computers will never be able to. In life sciences, supply chain management, chemistry research and much more. Therefore, it is also crucial that our generation of IT enthusiasts and even our kids get familiar with quantum computing. If more people get excited about the fascinating opportunities the technology offers, it will hopefully help to push the development of quantum computing to new heights in the future.

In this way, we can solve the unsolvable problems society faces today and eventually make the world that we live in a better place.

DID YOU READ:What Angela Merkel and IBMs CEO have in common

Are you new to quantum computing? Or just curious to learn more about it? Then check out this video from WIRED with Dr. Talia Gershon, Senior Manager of Q Experiences at IBM Research.

In the video, she explains quantum computing to make kids, a teenager, a college student and a graduate student understand, and then discusses quantum computing myths and challenges with Professor Steve Girvin from Yale University:

Whether you are a child, student or professional, I hope the video helped you to understand more about the fascinating capabilities of quantum computing. If you are hooked, you can actually try a real quantum computer via the IBM Cloud. This is done through the IBM Q Experience platform.

If you have any further questions or comments please do not hesitate to contact me at janl@dk.ibm.com (Jan Lillelund). Furthermore, you can also check out the IBM Q homepage for much more information about quantum computing at IBM.

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Quantum computing explained so kids understand - IBM ...

Experts at the CES 2021 conference stress importance of security education

The second age of quantum computing is poised to bring a wealth of new opportunities to the cybersecurity industry but in order to take full advantage of these benefits, the skills gap must be closed.

This was the takeaway of a discussion between two cybersecurity experts at the CES 2021 virtual conference last week.

Pete Totrorici, director of Joint Information Warfare at the Department of Defense (DoD) Joint Artificial Intelligence (AI) Center, joined Vikram Sharma, CEO of QuintessenceLabs, during a talk titled AI and quantum cyber disruption.

Quantum computing is in its second age, according to Sharma, meaning that the cybersecurity industry will soon start to witness the improvements in encryption, AI, and other areas that have long been promised by the technology.

BACKGROUND Quantum leap forward in cryptography could make niche technology mainstream

Quantum-era cybersecurity will wield the power to detect and deflect quantum-era cyber-attacks before they cause harm, a report from IBM reads.

It is the technology of our time, indeed, commented Sharma, who is based in Canberra, Australia.

QuintessenceLabs is looking at the application of advanced quantum technologies within the cybersecurity sphere, says Sharma, in particular the realm of data protection.

Governments and large organizations have also invested in the quantum space in recent years, with the US, UK, and India all providing funding for research.

The Joint AI Center was founded in 2018 and was launched to transform the Department of Defense to the adoption of artificial intelligence, said Totrorici.

A subdivision of the US Armed Forces, the center is responsible for exploring the use of AI and AI-enhanced communication for use in real-world combat situations.

Specifically, were trying to identify how we employ AI solutions that will have a mission impact, he said.

Across the department our day-to-day composes everything from development strategy, policy, product development, industry engagement, and other outreach activities, but if I need to identify something that I think is my most significant challenge today, its understanding the departments varied needs.

As with last year, CES took place virtually in 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic

In order to reach these needs, Totrorici said that relationships between the center, academia, industry, and government need to be established.

There was a time when the DoD go it alone, [however] those days are long gone.

If were going to solve problems like AI employment or quantum development, [it] is going to require partnerships, he said.

Totrorici and Sharma both agreed that while the future is certainly in quantum computing, the ever-widening cyber skills gap needs to be addressed to take advantage of its potential.

Indeed, these partnerships cannot be formed if there arent enough experts in the field.

Totrorici said: Forefront in the mind of the DoD nowadays is, How do we how do we cultivate and retain talent?

I still think the United States does a great job of growing and building talent. Now the question becomes, Will we retain that talent, how do we leverage that time going forward, and where are we building it?

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The (ISC)2 2020 Workforce Study (PDF) found that the current cybersecurity industry needs to grow by 89% in order to effectively protect against cyber threats.

Of the companies surveyed, the study also revealed that 64% current have some shortage of dedicated cybersecurity staff.

Here in Australia weve recently established whats called the Sydney Quantum Academy, and that is an overarching group that sits across four leadings institutions that are doing some cutting-edge work in quantum in the country, said Sharma.

One of the aims of that academy is to produce quantum skilled folks broadly, but also looking specifically in the quantum cybersecurity area.

So certainly, some small initiatives that [have] kicked off, but I think theres a big gap there that that will need to be filled as we move forward.

READ MORE Infosec pro Vandana Verma on improving diversity and helping to grow the Indian security community

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Mind the (skills) gap: Cybersecurity talent pool must expand to take advantage of quantum computing opportunities - The Daily Swig

The potential of quantum computing is one of the focuses ofa summit in Genevathataimstoimprove the dialogue between diplomatsandthescientific communityto safeguard our collective welfare.Tworesearchersexplaintherewards and risks ofquantum computing.

Dorian Burkhalter

Thescientists, diplomats, captains of industry and investors gathering inGenevafor the first-ever summit of theScience and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA)External linkwill, among other lofty goals, discuss howpolicymakersshouldprepare forquantumcomputing, provide governance for it,and ensure thatitis accessible to all.But what are quantum computers, and whatwill they be able to do?

Quantum computersperform calculations byexploitingtheproperties ofquantummechanics, which describes thebehaviourofatoms andparticles at a subatomic scale,for example,howelectrons interact with each other.As quantum computersoperate onthe same set of rules asmolecules do,they are,for instance,much better suitedto simulate them than classical computers are.

Today, quantum computers are small and unreliable. They are not yet able to solve problems classical computers cannot.

There is still some uncertainty, but I don't see any reason to not be able to develop such a quantum computer, although it's a huge engineering challenge, says Nicolas Gisin, professor emeritus at the University of Genevaand at the Schaffhausen Institute of Technology,and an expert in quantum technologies.

Quantum computerscouldhelp solvesome of the worlds most pressing problems. They couldaccelerate thediscovery ofmaterials for longer-lasting batteries,bettersolar panels, andnew medicaltreatments.They could also break current encryptionmethods, meaning that information secure today maybecomeat risk tomorrow.

For private companies, winning the race to develop reliable and powerful quantum computers means reaping large economic rewards. For countries, it means gaining a significant national security advantage.

Gisinsaysquantum computers capable of simulating new molecules could be 5-10 years away, while more powerful quantum computers that can break encryption could become a reality in 10-20 years.

The pace at whichthesetechnologies develop will depend on the level of investments made.Large technology firms such as IBM, Microsoft, and Googleare all developing quantum computers, while the US, China,and Europeareinvestingheavilyinquantum technologies.

Anticipating the arrival ofthesetechnologies isimportant,because you play through different scenarios, and some you may like,some you may not like,says HeikeRiel, IBM Fellow at IBMResearch in Zurich.Then you can also think of what type of regulations you may need,or what type of research you need to foster.

TheSwiss governmentis a supporter oftheGESDAfoundationwhichorganisedits first summit in Geneva fromOctober 7-9.The conferencebringstogetherscientists, diplomats, andother stakeholders to discussfuturescientific developmentsandtoanticipate their impacton society.

To work well, scientists needfavourableframeworks. There is definitely a back and forth between science and diplomacy, and science and politics, because diplomacy can also advance science, Riel says.

Politicians and diplomatsare responsible forcreatingopportunities for researchers to collaborate across borders. Initiatives and funding aimed at addressingspecifictechnical problems influence the directionofresearchefforts.

The fact that Switzerland is outside of the European research framework is an absurdity for everyone because this is just going to harm both Switzerland and Europe, Gisin says. It would be really important that Europe and Switzerland understand that we will both benefit if we talk together more and collaborate more.

Since July 2021, Switzerland haslimited accessto Horizon Europe, the European Unions flagship funding program for research and innovation due to a breakdown in negotiations on regulating bilateral relations.

Many of ourproblemstodaysuch as climate change or the Covid-19 pandemicare globalin nature.Getting governments across the world to agree to work togetheronsolutions is not easy, but researcherscan help.

The research communitylikes to worktogether globally, and this collaboration has helped historically to overcome certainbarriers, Riel says, emphasising the importance of communication in this regard.

Researchers working togetheron a global scaleduring the pandemichasled to vaccines being developed atarecord-breakingspeed.During the Cold Warat theEuropean Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva,Sovietscientistsremained involvedin projectswhich allowedforsomecommunicationto take place.

In science, we have a common ground and it's kind of universal; the scientists in the UnitedStates, Canada, Australia,Europeand China, they all work on the same problems, they all try to solve the same technical issues, Riel says.

Scientists also have an important role to play to inform and share facts with both policymakers and the public, even if politicians cannotrely solely on scientific evidence when making decisions. The challenges of communicatingfact-based evidencehavebeen laid bare during the pandemic.

I think it's very important that we also inform the society of what we are doingthat it's not a mystery thatscares people, Riel says.

Ultimately,to successfullyaddress global challenges scientists,diplomats and politicians willhave towork together.

It's really a cooperation between the global collaboration of the scientists and the global collaboration of the diplomats to solve the problems together, Riel says.

See the article here:
How science and diplomacy inform each other - SWI swissinfo.ch - swissinfo.ch

In a surprising discovery, Princeton physicists have observed an unexpected quantum behavior in an insulator made from a material called tungsten ditelluride. This phenomenon, known as quantum oscillation, is typically observed in metals rather than insulators, and its discovery offers new insights into our understanding of the quantum world. The findings also hint at the existence of an entirely new type of quantum particle.

The discovery challenges a long-held distinction between metals and insulators, because in the established quantum theory of materials, insulators were not thought to be able to experience quantum oscillations.

If our interpretations are correct, we are seeing a fundamentally new form of quantum matter, said Sanfeng Wu, assistant professor of physics at Princeton University and the senior author of a recent paper in Nature detailing this new discovery. We are now imagining a wholly new quantum world hidden in insulators. Its possible that we simply missed identifying them over the last several decades.

The observation of quantum oscillations has long been considered a hallmark of the difference between metals and insulators. In metals, electrons are highly mobile, and resistivity the resistance to electrical conduction is weak. Nearly a century ago, researchers observed that a magnetic field, coupled with very low temperatures, can cause electrons to shift from a classical state to a quantum state, causing oscillations in the metals resistivity. In insulators, by contrast, electrons cannot move and the materials have very high resistivity, so quantum oscillations of this sort are not expected to occur, no matter the strength of magnetic field applied.

The discovery was made when the researchers were studying a material called tungsten ditelluride, which they made into a two-dimensional material. They prepared the material by using standard scotch tape to increasingly exfoliate, or shave, the layers down to what is called a monolayer a single atom-thin layer. Thick tungsten ditelluride behaves like a metal. But once it is converted to a monolayer, it becomes a very strong insulator.

This material has a lot of special quantum properties, Wu said.

The researchers then set about measuring the resistivity of the monolayer tungsten ditelluride under magnetic fields. To their surprise, the resistivity of the insulator, despite being quite large, began to oscillate as the magnetic field was increased, indicating the shift into a quantum state. In effect, the material a very strong insulator was exhibiting the most remarkable quantum property of a metal.

This came as a complete surprise, Wu said. We asked ourselves, Whats going on here? We dont fully understand it yet.

Wu noted that there are no current theories to explain this phenomenon.

Nonetheless, Wu and his colleagues have put forward a provocative hypothesis a form of quantum matter that is neutrally charged. Because of very strong interactions, the electrons are organizing themselves to produce this new kind of quantum matter, Wu said.

But it is ultimately no longer the electrons that are oscillating, said Wu. Instead, the researchers believe that new particles, which they have dubbed neutral fermions, are born out of these strongly interacting electrons and are responsible for creating this highly remarkable quantum effect.

Fermions are a category of quantum particles that include electrons. In quantum materials, charged fermions can be negatively charged electrons or positively charged holes that are responsible for the electrical conduction. Namely, if the material is an electrical insulator, these charged fermions cant move freely. However, particles that are neutral that is, neither negatively nor positively charged are theoretically possible to be present and mobile in an insulator.

Our experimental results conflict with all existing theories based on charged fermions, said Pengjie Wang, co-first author on the paper and postdoctoral research associate, but could be explained in the presence of charge-neutral fermions.

The Princeton team plans further investigation into the quantum properties of tungsten ditelluride. They are particularly interested in discovering whether their hypothesis about the existence of a new quantum particle is valid.

This is only the starting point, Wu said. If were correct, future researchers will find other insulators with this surprising quantum property.

Despite the newness of the research and the tentative interpretation of the results, Wu speculated about how this phenomenon could be put to practical use.

Its possible that neutral fermions could be used in the future for encoding information that would be useful in quantum computing, he said. In the meantime, though, were still in the very early stages of understanding quantum phenomena like this, so fundamental discoveries have to be made.

Reference: Landau quantization and highly mobile fermions in an insulator by Pengjie Wang, Guo Yu, Yanyu Jia, Michael Onyszczak, F. Alexandre Cevallos, Shiming Lei, Sebastian Klemenz, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Robert J. Cava, Leslie M. Schoop and Sanfeng Wu, Nature.DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-03084-9

In addition to Wu and Wang, the team included co-first authors Guo Yu, a graduate student in electrical engineering, and Yanyu Jia, a graduate student in physics. Other key Princeton contributors were Leslie Schoop, assistant professor of chemistry; Robert Cava, the Russell Wellman Moore Professor of Chemistry; Michael Onyszczak, a physics graduate student; and three former postdoctoral research associates: Shiming Lei, Sebastian Klemenz and F. Alexandre Cevallos, who is also a 2018 Princeton Ph.D. alumnus. Kenji Watanabe and Takashi Taniguchi of the National Institute for Material Science in Japan also contributed.

Landau quantization and highly mobile fermions in an insulator, by Pengjie Wang, Guo Yu, Yanyu Jia, Michael Onyszczak, F. Alexandre Cevallos, Shiming Lei, Sebastian Klemenz, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Robert J. Cava, Leslie M. Schoop, and Sanfeng Wu, was published Jan. 4 in the journal Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-03084-9).

This work was primarily supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through the Princeton University Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (DMR-1420541 and DMR-2011750) and a CAREER award (DMR-1942942). Early measurements were performed at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, which is supported by an NSF Cooperative Agreement (DMR-1644779), and the State of Florida. Additional support came from the Elemental Strategy Initiative conducted by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (JPMXP0112101001), the Japan Society for the Promotion of Sciences KAKENHI program (JP20H00354) and the Japan Science and Technology Agencys CREST program (JPMJCR15F3). Further support came from the U.S. Army Research Office Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative on Topological Insulators (W911NF1210461), the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation through a Beckman Young Investigator grant, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (GBMF9064).

Read the rest here:
Surprising Discovery of Unexpected Quantum Behavior in Insulators Suggests Existence of Entirely New Type of Particle - SciTechDaily

WASHINGTON - U.S. President-elect Joe Bidens pick to lead the Pentagon warns the country is facing a series of enemies, both at home and abroad, and that it will fall, in part, to the United States military to overcome the dangers.

Retired General Lloyd Austin appeared before lawmakers Tuesday and said his first priority if confirmed as the countrys next secretary of defense would be to make sure all military resources are brought to bear against the coronavirus pandemic.

"The greatest challenge to our country right now ... is the pandemic," Austin told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wearing a suit and tie instead of the Army dress uniform he wore when he testified in Congress as the commander of U.S. military forces across the Middle East and South Asia.

"It's killed over 400,000 of our American citizens. That's just an incredible, incredible loss of life," he said. We have to do everything we can to break the cycle of transmission and begin to turn this thing around."

Austin did not offer specifics about how he would ramp up the Pentagons current efforts to distribute the coronavirus vaccines as part of what has been known as Operation Warp Speed. But he said he does believe there is more the Pentagon can do to counter what he described as the most immediate national security challenge.

Countering extremism at home

Austin spoke shortly after U.S. defense officials announced 12 National Guard troops initially assigned to help provide security for Bidens inauguration Wednesday were removed due to extremist ties. Austin pledged to take on what he called the enemy within.

The job of the Department of Defense is to keep America safe from our enemies, but we can't do that if some of those enemies lie with our own ranks," he said.

This [extremism] has no place in the military of the United States of America, Austin added, describing it as part of a broader battle.

I will fight hard to stamp out sexual assault and to rid our ranks of racists and extremists and to create a climate where everyone fit and willing has the opportunity to serve," he told U.S. lawmakers.

The 67-year-old Austin is a familiar face to many of the lawmakers who will vote on whether to confirm him, though his nomination is not without controversy.

U.S. law requires former active-duty military officers to be retired for seven years before they can serve as defense secretary a law meant to ensure civilian control of the military. But Austin retired just five years ago, stepping down as the leader of U.S. Central Command in 2016.

Waivers have been granted just twice, most recently in 2017 for retired General Jim Mattis, who served as outgoing President Donald Trumps first defense secretary.

On Tuesday, some lawmakers, including Republican Senator Tom Cotton and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, told Austin they would not support a waiver. Cotton went as far as to call his support of a waiver for Mattis a mistake.

Austin said he understood the concerns about "having another recently retired general" take the reins at the Pentagon and promised, that if confirmed, the voices of civilian defense officials would be heard.

"The safety and security of our democracy demands competent civilian control of our armed forces," he said. "I have spent my entire life committed to that."

Like many of President-elect Bidens Cabinet selections, Austin focused on a change in course after four years under Trump and his America First policy.

Reaffirming alliances

Austin, in particular, noted the importance of the countrys military alliances, saying that one of his first trips would be to visit Japan, South Korea and Australia, key allies in the Indo-Pacific, where competition with China is heating up.

China is the most concerning competitor that we're facing," he said.

"Their goal is to be a dominant world power," Austin added. We have to make sure that we begin to check their aggression."

The retired general promised lawmakers a laser-like focus on making sure the U.S. maintains a competitive edge over the growing Chinese military, though he said to do so will require investment in new technologies, including artificial intelligence and quantum computing areas in which China has been closing the gap.

Austin said Russia, long viewed as Washingtons other key adversary in what Trump officials have described as an era of great power competition, remains a concern but not in the same way as Beijing.

"Russia is also a threat but it's in decline," he said, warning Moscow can still do "a great deal of damage" in cyberspace, like with the SolarWinds hack, and with influence operations.

In addition to Russia and China, lawmakers questioned Austin about the incoming Biden administrations position on Iran and talk the U.S. might seek to rejoin the so-called Iran nuclear deal.

Iran - a destabilizing element

Austin indicated any reentry to the nuclear deal would require movement by Tehran.

The preconditions for us considering to reenter into that agreement would be that Iran meet the conditions outlined in the agreement back to where they should have been," Austin said.

And while the former CENTCOM commander said while the Trump administrations successful efforts to help normalize ties between Israel and Arab countries in the region may be helping put additional pressure on the regime, the danger remains.

"Iran continues to be a destabilizing element," Austin told lawmakers. [Iran] does present a threat to our partners in the region and those forces that we have stationed in the region."

As for Afghanistan, where a Trump administration drawdown has left just 2,500 U.S. troops, Austin expressed a cautious hope.

"This conflict needs to come to an end. We need to see an agreement reached," he said.

If confirmed by the Senate, the former four-star general would be the first African American to serve as defense secretary.

Originally posted here:
Defense Secretary Nominee: US Faces Enemies Both at Home and Abroad - Voice of America

2020 was a year characterized by uncertainty, despair, and drastic change. However, several scientific and technological achievements provide hope for the future.

Google stakes its claim on quantum supremacy

Googles quantum computer, Sycamore, is the first instance of such a device outcompeting a classical computer. While a classical computer reads information as bits valued at 0 or 1, a quantum computers qubits can exist as both 0 and 1 at the same time, allowing for more data processing. Google announced that Sycamore performed a calculation in three minutes and 20 seconds that would otherwise have taken the most advanced classical computer 10,000 years. The applications of quantum computing are limitless, ranging from drug development to accurate weather forecasts to identifying which exoplanets likely harbour life. Although we may be five to 10 years away from having quantum computers that are useful for applications like these, Googles achievement is proof that such a future is possible.

Cave excavations push back arrival of first humans in the Americas by 15,000 years

New research published in Natureshows that humans may have arrived in the Americas as early as 30,000 years ago15,000 years earlier than current estimates. After painstaking excavations of the Chiquihuite Cave in Mexico, archaeologists uncovered nearly 2,000 stone tools and charcoal bits dating back 30,000 years. Further DNA analysis of the cave sediment, composed of plant and animal remains, corroborates these findings. The discovery challenges the commonly held theory that the Clovis people were the first inhabitants of the Americas 15,000 years ago. However, identifying factors of these mysterious early inhabitants, such as human DNA, were not found, suggesting they did not stay in the cave for long.

CRISPR-Cas9 edits genes in the human body

Doctors performed the first gene editing project in the human body using CRISPR-Cas9, a genome editing tool that can remove, add, or change parts of an organisms DNA sequence. The CRISPR method is based on a natural mechanism bacteria use to protect themselves from viral infections. Previous methods involved editing the genome after extracting DNA from the body. The treatment was administered to a patient with Lebers Congenital Amaurosis, an inherited form of blindness caused by a genetic mutation. Scientists deleted the harmful mutation by making two cuts on either side of the gene and allowing the ends of the DNA to reconnect. Although the patients vision showed some improvement, scientists are hopeful that further research into gene editing technologies will allow a permanent fix. This is one of many development efforts to use CRISPR-Cas9 technology to treat different diseases.

Anti-aging drugs: Senolytics

Growing old is a fight that many of us resist, but cannot win. Anti-aging drugs called senolytics could potentially delay aging and treat a number of associated diseases, although they do not prolong ones life. In the body, cells that are damaged beyond repair enter a senescence phase in which they stop dividing and begin programmed death. However, sometimes senescent cells resist their fate, build up in our bodies as we age, and seriously harm surrounding cells. Scientists believe that they are linked to diseases caused by aging and that targeting these cells using senolytics could be the solution. Anti-aging drugs entered human trials in 2020 and are predicted to become available in less than five years.

Virti: Training surgeons and front-line workers using virtual reality

Virti is an immersive video platform that allows users to visualize a high-stress situation in virtual reality in order to train ones decision-making skills under pressure and access real-time feedback. As part of efforts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 this year and help train clinicians while avoiding in-person contact, Vitri designed an AI-powered virtual patient that can role play life-like scenarios. Their COVID-19 modules also teach frontline workers how to put on personal protective equipment, administer treatments, and ventilate patients. A company study by Virti found that their approaches increase knowledge retention by 230 per cent compared to training in person.

See the rest here:
2020 Rewind: SciTech discoveries of the year - McGill Tribune

Safe Deposit. Symbol of cryptocurrency safety. The man puts a physical bitcoin in small Residential ... [+] Vault. Toned soft focus picture.

Theres a lurking fear in cryptocurrency communities about quantum computing. Could it break cryptocurrencies and the encryption that protects them? How close might that be? Do the headlines around quantum supremacy mean that my private keys are at risk?

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The simple answer: no. But lets dive deeper into this phenomenon and really try to understand why this is the case and how quantum computing will interact with cryptocurrencies.

To start off with, lets define quantum computing and the classical computing were all used to, and seeing where the terms compare and contrast with one another. Quantum computing can be roughly placed in the same paradigm as classical pre-1900s physics and modern physics which comprises Einsteins insights on relativity and quantum physics.

Classical computing is the kind of computers weve grown used to, the extensions of Turings theories on computation, the laptops or mobile phones that you carry around with you. Classical computing relies heavily on the manipulation of physical bits the famous 0s and 1s.

Quantum computing relies on qubits, bits that are held in superposition and use quantum principles to complete calculations. The information captured or generated by a quantum system benefits from the ability of qubits to be in more than one physical state at a time (superposition), but there is information decay in capturing the state of the system.

One point that will be immediately relevant to the discussion is that quantum computers are not universally better than classical computers as a result. When people speak about quantum supremacy, including reports from Google GOOG and/or China, they really mean that a quantum computer can do a certain task better than classical computers, perhaps one that is impossible to do in any reasonable timeframe with classical computers.

We can think of this in terms of time scales from a computing perspective there are some, but not all functions, that go from being impossible to accomplish in any meaningful human-level time period to ones that become slow but manageable with a large enough quantum computer.

In a way, you can think of Turing tests and quantum supremacy tests in much the same way. Designed at first to demonstrate the superiority of one system over another (in the case of Turing tests, artificial language generation vs. human language comprehension, in the case of quantum supremacy tests, quantum computing systems vs classical computers), theyve become more gimmick than substance.

A quantum computer has to perform better at some minute and trivial task that might seem impressive but completely useless in much the same way a Turing test of machine-generated English might fool a Ukrainian child with no fluency in the language.

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This means that we have to narrow down to a function that quantum computers can be better on that would materially affect cryptocurrencies or the encryption theyre built on in order for quantum supremacy to matter.

One area of specific focus is Shors Algorithm, which can factor large prime numbers down into two smaller ones. This is a very useful property for breaking encryption, since the RSA family of encryption depends on factoring large prime numbers in exactly this manner. Shors Algorithm works in theory with a large enough quantum computer and so its a practical concern that eventually, Shors Algorithm might come into play and among other things, RSA encryption might be broken.

On this front, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has already started gathering proposals for post-quantum cryptography, encryption that would operate and not be broken even with much larger quantum computers than the ones were currently able to build. They estimate that large enough quantum computers to disrupt classical encryption will potentially arrive in the next twenty years.

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For cryptocurrencies, a fork in the future that might affect large parts of the chain, but it will be somewhat predictable there is a lot of thought being placed on post-quantum encryption technology. Bitcoin would not be one of the first planks to fall if classical encryption were suddenly broken for a number of reasons. Yet, a soft fork (as opposed to a hard one) might be enough to help move crypto-assets from suddenly insecure keys to secure post-quantum encryption.

Even an efficient implementation of Shors Algorithm may not break some of the cryptography standards used in bitcoin. SHA-256 is theorized to be quantum-resistant.

The most efficient theoretical implementation of a quantum computer to detect a SHA-256 collision is actually less efficient than the theorized classical implementation for breaking the standard. The wallet file in the original Bitcoin client is using SHA-512 (a more secure version than SHA-256) to help encrypt private keys.

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Most of the encryption in modern cryptocurrencies are built on elliptic curve cryptography rather than RSA especially in the generation of signatures in bitcoin which requires ECDSA. This is largely due to the fact that elliptic curves are correspondingly harder to crack than RSA (sometimes exponentially so) from classical computers.

Thanks to Moores law and better classical computing, secure RSA key sizes have grown so large so as to be impractical compared to elliptic curve cryptography so most people will opt for elliptic curve cryptography for performance reasons for their systems, which is the case with bitcoin.

However, quantum computers seem to flip this logic on its head: given a large enough quantum computer with enough qubits, you can break elliptic curve cryptography easier than you might break RSA.

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Both elliptic curve cryptography are widely used in a bunch of other industries and use cases as well RSA-2048 and higher are standards in the conventional banking system to send encrypted information, for example.

Yet, even with a large enough quantum computer, you would still have to reveal or find somebodys public keys so they could be subject to attack. With cryptocurrency wallet reuse being frowned upon, and a general encouragement of good privacy practices, the likelihood of this attack is already being reduced.

Another area of attack could be Grovers algorithm, which can exponentially speed up mining with a large enough quantum computer though its probable that ASICs, the specialized classical computers mostly used to mine bitcoin now, would be faster compared to the earliest versions of more complete quantum computers.

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This poses more of a stronger threat when it comes to the state of cryptocurrencies: the ability to mine quickly in a sudden quantum speedup could lead to destabilization of prices and more importantly control of the chain itself an unexpected quantum speedup could, if hidden, lead to vast centralization of mining and possible 51% attacks. Yet the most likely case is that larger systems of quantum computing will be treated like any kind of hardware, similar to the transition for miners between GPUs, FGPAs and ASICs a slow economic transition to better tooling.

Its conceivable that these avenues of attack and perhaps other more unpredictable ones might emerge, yet post-quantum encryption planning is already in process and through the mechanism of forks, cryptocurrencies can be updated to use post-quantum encryption standards and defend against these weaknesses.

Bitcoin and even other cryptocurrencies and their history are filled with examples of hardware and software changes that had to be made to make the network more secure and performant and good security practices in the present (avoiding wallet reuse) can help prepare for a more uncertain future.

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So quantum computers being added to the mix wont suddenly render classical modes of encryption useless or mining trivial quantum supremacy now doesnt mean that your encryption or the security of bitcoin is at risk right at this moment.

The real threat is when quantum computers become many scales larger than they currently are by which point planning for post-quantum encryption, which is already well on the way would come to the fore, and at which point bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can soft fork and use both decentralized governance and dynamism when needed in the face of new existential threats to defeat the threat of quantum supremacy.

More:
Here's Why Quantum Computing Will Not Break Cryptocurrencies - Forbes

Lawyers love conflict. They thrive on it. If anyone can coexist with conflict, its a lawyer.

At least thats how most people think of lawyers. In reality, the opposite is more often true. The only people who love conflict might be candidates for the therapists couch. Most of us, especially lawyers, are averse to it.

The lawyer turned clinical psychologist, Larry Richard, has given personality assessments to over 5,000 lawyers over 20 years. As a tribe lawyers are disproportionately low in the personality traits of resilience and sociability. Resilience is the mark of emotional intelligence that allows one to accept failure, rejection and loss. Were not so good at that it turns out.

That may be, but what does that have to do with the economics of a successful legal practice or law department? It might surprise a few of us who subscribe to the zealous advocacy theory of legal practice that collaboration is more economically sustainable than exclusive competition.

Hold this thought in mind: in 2017 $10 billion in legal services revenue went from the BigLaw vault into the pockets of alternative legal service providers that are not law firms.

Why? Our conflict aversion is our greatest enemy in the Exponential Age of digital data, artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies. Doing better, faster and cheaper is the mantra of the collaborative economy. The legal business model that has worked extremely well in the competitive economy is on the verge of collapse, though that claim may seem a bit grandioseeven for a lawyer. But lets examine the evidence.

Unresolved Conflict in Workplaces is Expensive

Howatt HR Consulting provides a conflict cost calculator to gauge the cost of unresolved conflict in law firms and legal departments. I recently ran my calculator from the perspective of the most conflict-rich workplace I remember being a part of. It only cost $100,000 per year in lost productivity, absenteeism, health-care claims, turnover and other profit-destroying contributors. That is simply the impact of one person in that workplace! Howatt points out that the Canadian economy suffers a loss of over $16 billion each year due to unresolved conflict in the nations workplaces.

Its customarily calculated that the cost of an employees turnoverthrough termination or voluntary departure, then replacementcosts 120 percent of that employees annual compensation. For a $55,000-a-year paralegal, the cost of losing him or her is $66,000. Lost productivity, training and bringing a replacement to the same level of performance as a predecessor is not cheap.

At the British Legal Technology Forum 2018, Kevin Gold, a Mishcon de Reya managing partner, stated in a plenary session that the firm had calculated the costs of bringing a new young attorney to the point of return on investment; it was 250,000, or roughly $340,000.

I have listened as partners proudly describe the economic brilliance of their firms leverage model in terms such as, We have one associate make partner for every eight associates we hire. Theyre expendable. If they cant figure out how to succeed in our business model, we dont need them. There are more waiting for the empty chair. But losing seven associates to every one who makes partner is a very expensive proposition. Most associates who arent going to make partner are gone, voluntarily or otherwise, before they achieve third-year status.

According to Gold, the young lawyers at Mishcon de Reya become revenue-neutral somewhere close to their third year. Under the business model in my partner-friends firm, the firm loses about $2.5 million for every successful associate. Adjust the variables however you wish and the loss of treating associate attorneys as fungible is economically foolhardy, if not disastrous.

Similarly, the numerous accounts and studies of lateral attorney hires reflect how rarely the transition is economically beneficial for the firm. The laterally hired partner usually makes out like a bandit, but the firm often breaks even at best. More often the transaction is a loss leader. It may be worth the headlines, but the price borne by the bottom line can be less than rosy.

Of course, the law is one of the only professions that prohibits noncompete agreements with lawyers. A high-value executive can be bound by non-competes, but not lawyers. As a former firm executive committee member, we often said that a law firm is the only business that allows its inventory to walk out the door each night. If the lawyer doesnt return the next day, neither do their clients in most cases. When negotiating with a lateral attorney, the deal is usually cut on the basis of the attorneys portable business.

Whats the cause of all this lost revenue and profit? Unresolved conflict is usually the culprit. Perhaps its the associate who isnt popular enough with the firms power brokers and influencers to be worth the effort to resource, train, develop and treat as the resource Mishcon de Reya recognizes him or her to be. Or partners at odds with each over origination credits in the last compensation wars are more likely to engage in passive-aggressive behavior than have a conversation intended to reach agreement over a proper allocation of credit.

Admit it, you know its true. After 40 years of legal practice, Ive witnessed more unresolved conflict in law firms and legal departments than in prisons. Prisoners just take it outside. Lawyers demonstrate what we call Nashville Nice around these parts. You learn how to smile to their faces and then stab them in the back with a politically correct criticism in the Nashville fashion: Oh, shes a nice person, and I would never say anything bad about her, bless her heart. Thats conflict aversion.

Frankly, its more than an economic problem. Its a societal, emotional and health problem. Lawyer addiction, suicide and relational dysfunction exceed the general norm by a large margin. That, too, is an economic scourge.

The statistics cannot be questioned. Gender diversity in law school is far superior to that in law firms, legal departments, firm management committees, partnerships and the executive suite. Racial diversity doesnt even begin to reflect the population. The steady reduction in diversity as the organizational level of power and status increases is an indictment on our entire profession. What are the economic costs? The answer is simply unimaginableand totally unacceptable.

Thriving in the Collaborative Economy

We all remember the 1L experience when the most intimidating professor in our assigned classes made the recurrent sobering remark: Look to your right, look to the left . . . . Thus began our steady march into the competitive mindset of thinking like a lawyer. Unfortunately, for those of us wired that way, this culture of competition fed all our worst instincts. For others it was soul destroying. Richard, the lawyer turned clinical therapist, indicates thats the reason he became a psychologist.

While the law has perfected radical competitiveness, the rest of the business world is becoming radically collaborative. This transformative transition is due to the inevitability of digital power and pace. For a full exploration of the exponential nature of the Digital Age and its impact on commerce and culture, read The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. The authors brilliantly compare the attributes of the first half of the Machine Agefrom the steam engine up to 2006to the second half. The first was competitive leading to scarcity. The second, also known as the Exponential Age, is collaborative leading to abundance.

A recent visit to Silicon Valley revealed how cooperative business has become. I spoke with a software engineer working for Dell who supervises a software development team. Nothing abnormal about that. However, he manages a team whose members change every day on projects that change every day. A Dell engineer manages a team that one day might consist of developers from Microsoft, SAP, Google, Apple and others. They are working on open-source software that builds open-source softwarefor the benefit of all.

Some say attorneys could never do that. It would be unethical, wouldnt it? Ask Pfizer and the small number of law firms that won the privilege of doing Pfizers legal work. A few years ago the pharmaceutical company required its successful law firm bidders to share work product, lessons learned and mistakes made with the other Pfizer core counsel after each matter. Thats distinctly unconventionaland the hallmark of successful business models in the Exponential Age.

Many other professions have already arrived in the cooperative age of business. Preparing for a recent training program for the Vanderbilt Medical School Leadership College, I discovered Quantum Leadership: Building Better Partnerships for Sustainable Health, by Tim Porter-OGrady and Kathy Malloch. Remove the word health and replace it with law and the parallels are unmistakable. The tools of technology, artificial intelligence, blockchain, the internet of things and cryptocurrency are, or will be, changing everything. Even quantum computing has arrived, making traditional computing look like the tortoise versus the harethat is, quantum computers can calculate 100,000 times faster. As a result the old keep-it-so-no-one-else-can-get-it mindset is evaporating. Do you want to work on IBMs quantum computer, operating at 20 qubits and soon to be 50 qubits? Its free and open source. Go right ahead.

When did all this happen, you ask. Seemingly overnight, and without warning. Thats exponential. As a result no disciplinary expertise is sufficient in itself. Cognitive diversity is the fuel of innovation. Seeing a problem from the same perspective leads to the same old solutions. Seeing the same problem from multiple perspectives (gender, racial, religious, sexual orientation, disability and national origin) brings creativity to the table, and competition is inimical to its success.

What quantum leadership requires is a new form of leadership: one thats radically collaborative. The old commercial model is hierarchical, structured and highly command-and-control oriented. The new model is flat, team-based and relational.

The new commercial model is focused on accountability rather than responsibility and output rather than effort. My life as a lawyer was spent selling effort, not output. Time has been the coin of the realm in the law since 1956, when the ABA informed lawyers that time is your most valuable asset. Man, did we buy that, and so did our clientsuntil they tired of it. Now they want value, not effort.

The difference between the old commercial order and the new is stunning. Working in teams is not taught in law school. I have been teaching Legal Project Management at Vanderbilt Law School for six years. Law students routinely report that this class is the first time they have been asked to work in a team in law school unless they are joint J.D./M.B.A. candidates. Business students dont understand why law school doesnt value teamwork. Therein lies one of our greatest problems: our clients are team-based, and we dont know how to do that.

Replacing Hypercompetition with Collaboration

Lets return to the question of the missing $10 billion. How could BigLaw lose that much value in a year? Lets examine the data.

The data isnt secret. Its been building over 10 years. Its more than an aberration; its a statistical trend. The data is submitted voluntarily by the nations largest law firmsnamely, the Am Law 300on a monthly basis and reported in the Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor Index reports. Although anonymized, the data collected over the last 10 years is stunning. Law firms are losing market share steadily, relentlessly and without response.

Spend time with the data reported in the Georgetown Law Centers and Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institutes annual Report on the State of the Legal Market. Ten years of BigLaw self-reporting reveals the following: all the data reflecting financial progress in time billed and billings realized, collected and banked in firm law treasuries is in long-term decline. There are two rising trends: rates and costs. This dangerous economic state is obvious to everyone. Nothing is being done except by a few high-flying firms that have figured out the antidote to demise.

Check out Table 15 in the Georgetown/Thomson Reuters report. The missing $10 billion went to nonlawyers and nonlaw firms such as PwC, Deloitte, Axiom, lexunited, Pangea3, LegalZoom and a growing host of alternative legal service providers doing law better, faster and cheaperand sometimes without a law license. Thats what the market wants.

The report pulls no punches this year. It states: Stop doubling down on your failing strategy! Citing the Harvard Business Review analysis by the same title, the report warns BigLaw leaders that their conflict aversion could make these hallmark firms irrelevant.

How so? Harvard and Georgetown Law cite the power of our mind-blindness in the face of economic peril. Its all about heuristics, the state of mind that partially determines how we react to stress and threat. Our worldview is only valuable in the context of how it was formed. Another way of saying it is, You cant tell a room full of millionaires their business model is broken. They cant hear it. This is not a function of intelligence but of experience. We cant know what we dont know.

Specifically, the mental heuristics that take over our cognitive capacity in times of economic peril can be summarized with startling reality in the following ways:

When combined, these mental heuristics, which reflect simply how the human brain works, can be a toxic brew of mind-blindness, obscuring paths to rescue and ways out of a dilemma of our own making.

Whats a body to do? We must overcome our conflict aversion and welcome a path to open, respectful and strategic conflict competence rather than our preferred resort to passive-aggressive behavior.

The Harvard Business Review article suggests rules to follow to achieve conflict competence:

Embracing the Cooperative Economy

Although unfamiliar to those of us steeped in a competitive model of economic success, the world has moved on and is continuing to stake out new opportunities for economic success through previously unheard-of degrees of cooperative effort.

Start small and learn as you go. Discover the power and the scope of building bridges rather than silos. As our digital world continues to explode in data and the power to process it, learn to learn from other disciplines. Make friends with a data scientist, a software engineer or a legal project manager. Learn to see from their perspectives.

And, most importantly, jump in, the waters fine.

Follow this link:
Collaboration is the Future - Mediate.com

Paris, December 4, 2020 Atos introduces Q-score, the first universal quantum metrics, applicable to all programmable quantum processors. Atos Q-score measures a quantum systems effectiveness at handling real-life problems, those which cannot be solved by traditional computers, rather than simply measuring its theoretical performance. Q-score reaffirms Atos commitment to deliver early and concrete benefits of quantum computing. Over the past five years, Atos has become a pioneer in quantum applications through its participation in industrial and academic partnerships and funded projects, working hand-in-hand with industrials to develop use-cases which will be able to be accelerated by quantum computing.

Faced with the emergence of a myriad of processor technologies and programming approaches, organizations looking to invest in quantum computing need a reliable metrics to help them choose the most efficient path for them. Being hardware-agnostic, Q-score is an objective, simple and fair metrics which they can rely on, said Elie Girard, Atos CEO. Since the launch of Atos Quantum in 2016, the first quantum computing industry program in Europe, our aim has remained the same: advance the development of industry and research applications, and pave the way to quantum superiority.

What does Q-score measure?

Today the number of qubits (quantum units) is the most common figure of merit for assessing the performance of a quantum system. However, qubits are volatile and vastly vary in quality (speed, stability, connectivity, etc.) from one quantum technology to another (such as supraconducting, trapped ions, silicon and photonics), making it an imperfect benchmark tool. By focusing on the ability to solve well-known combinatorial optimization problems, Atos Q-score will provide research centers, universities, businesses and technological leaders with explicit, reliable, objective and comparable results when solving real-world optimization problems.

Q-score measures the actual performance of quantum processors when solving an optimization problem, representative of the near-term quantum computing era (NISQ - Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum). To provide a frame of reference for comparing performance scores and maintain uniformity, Q-score relies on a standard combinatorial optimization problem, the same for all assessments (the Max-Cut Problem, similar to the well-known TSP - Travelling Salesman Problem, see below). The score is calculated based on the maximum number of variables within such a problem that a quantum technology can optimize (ex: 23 variables = 23 Q-score or Qs).

Atos will organize the publication of a yearly list of the most powerful quantum processors in the world based on Q-score. Due in 2021, the first report will include actual self-assessments provided by manufacturers.

Based on an open access software package, Q-score is built on 3 pillars:

A free software kit, which enables Q-score to be run on any processor will be available in Q1 2021. Atos invites all manufacturers to run Q-score on their technology and publish their results.

Thanks to the advanced qubit simulation capabilities of the Atos Quantum Learning Machine (Atos QLM), its powerful quantum simulator, Atos is able to calculate Q-score estimates for various platforms. These estimates take into account the characteristics publicly provided by the manufacturers. Results range around a Q-score of 15 Qs, but progress is rapid, with an estimated average Q-score dating from one year ago in the area of 10 Qs, and an estimated projected average Q-score dating one year from now to be above 20 Qs.

Q-score has been reviewed by the Atos Quantum Advisory Board, a group of international experts, mathematicians and physicists authorities in their fields, which met onDecember 4, 2020.

Understanding Q-score using the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP)

Today's most promising application of quantum computing is solving large combinatorial optimization problems. Examples of such problems are the famous TSP problem and the less notorious but as important Max-Cut problem.

Problem statement: a traveler needs to visit N number of cities in a round-tour, where distances between all the cities are known and each city should be visited just once. What is the absolute shortest possible route so that he visits each city exactly once and returns to the origin city?

Simple in appearance, this problem becomes quite complex when it comes to giving a definitive, perfect answer taking into account an increasing number of N variables (cities). Max-Cut is a more generic problem, with a broad range of applications, for instance in the optimization of electronic boards or in the positioning of 5G antennas.

Q-score evaluates the capacity of a quantum processor to solve these combinatorial problems.

Q-score, Quantum Performance, and Quantum Superiority

While the most powerful High Performance Computers (HPC) worldwide to come in the near term (so called exascale) would reach an equivalent Q-score close to 60, today we estimate, according to public data, that the best Quantum Processing Unit (QPU) yields a Q-score around 15 Qs. With recent progress, we expect quantum performance to reach Q-scores above 20 Qs in the coming year.

Q-score can be measured for QPUs with more than 200 qubits. Therefore, it will remain the perfect metrics reference to identify and measure quantum superiority, defined as the ability of quantum technologies to solve an optimization problem that classical technologies cannot solve at the same point in time.

As per the above, Atos estimates quantum superiority in the context of optimization problems to be reached above 60 Qs.

Atos commitment to advance industry applications of quantum computing

The year 2020 represents an inflexion point in the quantum race, with the identification of the first real-life problems or applications which are unable to be solved in the classical world but may be able to be solved in the quantum world. As for any disruptive technology, envisaging the related applications (as well as necessary ethical limitations) is a major step towards conviction, adoption and success. This is exactly where Atos sees its main role.

Leveraging the Atos QLM and Atos unique expertise in algorithm development, the Group coordinates the European project NEASQC - NExt ApplicationS of Quantum Computing, one of the most ambitious projects which aims to boost near-term quantum applications and demonstrates quantum superiority. NEASQC brings together academics and manufacturers, motivated by the quantum acceleration of their business applications. These applications will be further supported by the release in 2023 of the first Atos NISQ accelerator, integrating qubits in an HPC - High Performance Computing architecture.

Below are some examples of applications from NEASQC industrial partners that could be accelerated by quantum computing:

To learn more about NEASQC and the use-cases above (as well as others), please visit https://neasqc.eu/

Bob Sorensen, Senior Vice President of Research, Chief Analyst for Quantum Computing at Hyperion Research, LLC, comments: Leveraging its widely acknowledged expertise in supercomputing, Atos is working to provide quantum computing users with early and tangible computational advantage on various applications by building on its Atos Quantum R&D program, with the aim of delivering near-term results through a hybrid quantum supercomputing approach.The launch of Q-score is a key innovative step that offers a way for the quantum computing community to better characterize gains by focusing on real-life use-cases.

On Friday, December 4, 2020, the Group will hold a media conference call in English at 12pm CET, chaired by Elie Girard, CEO, and Cyril Allouche, Fellow, Head of the Atos Quantum R&D Program, in order to present Q-score and answer questions from the press. Members of the Atos Quantum Advisory Board will be present. After the conference, a replay of the webcast will be available. Journalists can register to the press conference at: https://quantum-press-conference-atos.aio-events.com/105/participation_form

Atos Quantum Advisory Board members are:

To learn more about Q-score, please visit: https://atos.net/en/solutions/q-score

****

About Atos Atos is a global leader in digital transformation with 110,000 employees in 73 countries and annual revenue of 12 billion. European number one in Cloud, Cybersecurity and High-Performance Computing, the Group provides end-to-end Orchestrated Hybrid Cloud, Big Data, Business Applications and Digital Workplace solutions. The Group is the Worldwide Information Technology Partner for the Olympic & Paralympic Games and operates under the brands Atos, Atos|Syntel, and Unify. Atos is a SE (Societas Europaea), listed on the CAC40 Paris stock index.

The purpose of Atos is to help design the future of the information space. Its expertise and services support the development of knowledge, education and research in a multicultural approach and contribute to the development of scientific and technological excellence. Across the world, the Group enables its customers and employees, and members of societies at large to live, work and develop sustainably, in a safe and secure information space.

Press contact:Marion Delmas | marion.delmas@atos.net | +33 6 37 63 91 99

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Atos announces Q-score, the only universal metrics to assess quantum performance and superiority - GlobeNewswire

New York, USA, Dec. 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A latest report published by Research Dive on the globalquantum computing market sheds light on the current outlook and future growth of the market. As per the report, the global quantum computing market is expected to garner $667.3 million by growing at a CAGR of 30.0% from 2020 to 2027. This report is drafted by market experts by evaluating all the important aspects of the market. It is a perfect source of information and statistics for new entrants, market players, shareholders, stakeholders, investors, etc.

Check out How COVID-19 impacts the Global Quantum Computing Market. Click here to Connect with our Analyst to get more Market Insight: https://www.researchdive.com/connect-to-analyst/8332

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The report includes:

A summary of the market with its definition, advantages, and application areas. Detailed insights on market position, dynamics, statistics, growth rate, revenues, market shares, and future predictions. Key market segments, boomers, restraints, and investment opportunities. Present situation of the global as well as regional market from the viewpoint of companies, countries, and end industries. Information on leading companies, current market trends and developments, Porter Five Analysis, and top winning business strategies.

Factors Impacting the Market Growth:

As per the report, the growing cyber-attacks across the world is hugely contributing to the growth of the global quantum computing market. Moreover, the rising implementation of quantum computing technologies in agriculture for helping farmers to improve the efficiency and yield of crops is likely to unlock rewarding opportunities for the market growth. However, absence of highly experienced employees, having knowledge regarding quantum computing is likely to hinder the market growth.

Access Varied Market Reports Bearing Extensive Analysis of the Market Situation, Updated With The Impact of COVID-19: https://www.researchdive.com/covid-19-insights

COVID-19 Impact Analysis:

The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has made a significant impact on the global quantum computing market. During this crisis period, quantum computing technology can be used for medical research and other activities related to COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the technology can be beneficial for developing advanced drugs at an accelerated speed and for analyzing different types of interactions between biomolecules and fight infectious like viruses. In addition, businesses are greatly investing in the development of quantum computers for drug discovery amidst the crisis period. All these factors are expected to unlock novel investment opportunities for the market growth in the upcoming years.

Check out all Information and communication technology & media Industry Reports: https://www.researchdive.com/information-and-communication-technology-and-media

Segment Analysis:

The report segments the quantum computing market into offerings type, end user, and application.

By offerings type, the report further categorizes the market into: Consulting solutions Systems

Among these, the systems segment is expected to dominate the market by garnering a revenue of $313.3 million by 2027. This is mainly due to growing use of quantum computing in AI, radar making, machine learning technologies, and many others.

Based on application, the report further classifies the market into: Optimization Machine Learning Material Simulation

Among these, themachine learning segment is expected to observe accelerated growth and garner $236.9 million by 2027. This is mainly due to significant role of quantum computing in enhancing runtime, capacity, and learning efficiency. Moreover, quantum machine learning has the potential to speed-up various machine learning processes such as optimization, linear algebra, deep learning, and Kernel evaluation, which is likely to boost the market growth during the forecast period.

Regional Analysis:

The report explains the lookout of the global quantum computing market across several regions, including: Europe Asia Pacific LAMEA North America

Among these, the Asia-Pacific region is estimated to lead the market growth by growing at a striking growth rate of 31.60% during the forecast period. This is mainly because of the growing adoption of quantum computing technologies in numerous sectors including chemicals, healthcare, utilities & pharmaceuticals, and others in this region.

Market Players and Business Strategies:

The report offers a list of global key players in the quantum computing market and discloses some of their strategies and developments. The key players listed in the report are:

QC Ware, Corp. Cambridge Quantum Computing Limited D-Wave Systems Inc., International Business Machines Corporation Rigetti Computing 1QB Information Technologies River Lane Research StationQ Microsoft Anyon Google Inc.

These players are massively contributing to the growth of the market by performing activities such as mergers and acquisitions, novel developments, geographical expansions, and many more.

Our market experts have made use of several tools, methodologies, and research methods to get in-depth insights of the global quantum computing sector. Moreover, we strive to deliver a customized report to fulfill special requirements of our clients, on demand.Click Here to Get Absolute Top Companies Development Strategies Summary Report.

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Global Quantum Computing Market Predicted to Garner $667.3 Million by 2027, Growing at 30.0% CAGR from 2020 to 2027 - [193 pages] Informative Report...

A new tool that uses light to map out the electronic structures of crystals could reveal the capabilities of emerging quantum materials and pave the way for advanced energy technologies and quantum computers, according to researchers at the University of Michigan, the University of Regensburg and the University of Marburg.

A paper on the work is published in Science.

Applications include LED lights, solar cells and artificial photosynthesis.

Quantum materials could have an impact way beyond quantum computing, said Mackillo Kira, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan, who led the theory side of the new study. If you optimize quantum properties right, you can get 100% efficiency for light absorption.

Silicon-based solar cells are already becoming the cheapest form of electricity, although their sunlight-to-electricity conversion efficiency is rather low, about 30%. Emerging 2D semiconductors, which consist of a single layer of crystal, could do that much betterpotentially using up to 100% of the sunlight. They could also elevate quantum computing to room temperature from the near-absolute-zero machines demonstrated so far.

New quantum materials are now being discovered at a faster pace than ever, said Rupert Huber, a professor of physics at the University of Regensburg in Germany, who led the experimental work. By simply stacking such layers one on top of the other under variable twist angles, and with a wide selection of materials, scientists can now create artificial solids with truly unprecedented properties.

The ability to map these properties down to the atoms could help streamline the process of designing materials with the right quantum structures. But these ultrathin materials are much smaller and messier than earlier crystals, and the old analysis methods dont work. Now, 2D materials can be measured with the new laser-based method at room temperature and pressure.

The measurable operations include processes that are key to solar cells, lasers and optically driven quantum computing. Essentially, electrons pop between a ground state, in which they cannot travel, and states in the semiconductors conduction band, in which they are free to move through space. They do this by absorbing and emitting light.

The quantum mapping method uses a 100 femtosecond (100 quadrillionths of a second) pulse of red laser light to pop electrons out of the ground state and into the conduction band. Next the electrons are hit with a second pulse of infrared light. This pushes them so that they oscillate up and down an energy valley in the conduction band, a little like skateboarders in a halfpipe.

The team uses the dual wave/particle nature of electrons to create a standing wave pattern that looks like a comb. They discovered that when the peak of this electron comb overlaps with the materials band structureits quantum structureelectrons emit light intensely. That powerful light emission along, with the narrow width of the comb lines, helped create a picture so sharp that researchers call it super-resolution.

By combining that precise location information with the frequency of the light, the team was able to map out the band structure of the 2D semiconductor tungsten diselenide. Not only that, but they could also get a read on each electrons orbital angular momentum through the way the front of the light wave twisted in space. Manipulating an electrons orbital angular momentum, known also as a pseudospin, is a promising avenue for storing and processing quantum information.

In tungsten diselenide, the orbital angular momentum identifies which of two different valleys an electron occupies. The messages that the electrons send out can show researchers not only which valley the electron was in but also what the landscape of that valley looks like and how far apart the valleys are, which are the key elements needed to design new semiconductor-based quantum devices.

For instance, when the team used the laser to push electrons up the side of one valley until they fell into the other, the electrons emitted light at that drop point too. That light gives clues about the depths of the valleys and the height of the ridge between them. With this kind of information, researchers can figure out how the material would fare for a variety of purposes.

The paper is titled, Super-resolution lightwave tomography of electronic bands in quantum materials. This research was funded by the Army Research Office, the German Research Foundation and the U-M College of Engineering Blue Sky Research Program.

ReferenceBorsch M et al. Super-resolution lightwave tomography of electronic bands in quantum materials. Science 04 Dec 2020, Vol. 370, Issue 6521, pp. 1204-1207. DOI: 10.1126/science.abe2112

This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

Read more:
Quantum Structures Mapped With Light To Reveal Their Potential - Technology Networks

02Dec2020

Regional web aims to connect processors capable of exchanging qubits over optical fiber.

The QuTech collaboration, which is pioneering the application of quantum technologies in The Netherlands, has launched plans to build a high-speed quantum network connecting the Randstad metropolitan region.

According to project leaders at Technical University of Delft and the TNO research organization, the effort will focus on connecting quantum processors across a significant distance.

The aim is to build the very first fully functional quantum network using high-speed fiber connections, they announced. A quantum network is a radically new internet technology, with the potential for creating pioneering applications.

Optical channelsBy connecting quantum processors to each other via optical channels, such a network would enable the exchange of quantum bits - the basic units of quantum information upon which quantum computers are built.

Also known as qubits, these units enable high-security quantum communication. QuTech says that these connections are expected to evolve over time towards a global quantum network, allowing additional applications in areas like position verification, clock synchronization, and computation with external quantum computers.

Among other things, the project is intended to lead to new techniques, insights and standards that will bring a quantum network closer, stated the collaboration, which also includes telecoms firm KPN, Dutch ICT development organization SURF, and a VU Amsterdam spin-out company called Optical Positioning Navigation and Timing (OPNT).

QuTech adds that all existing quantum networks are based on a simpler technology, suggesting that the new Randstad project will represent a fully functional approach.

Different parties in the collaboration each contribute their own areas of expertise, it announced. Ultimately, the mix of skills will help to create a programmable quantum network that connects quantum processors in different cities.

Quantum ecosystemErwin van Zwet, Internet Division Engineering Lead at QuTech, added: Working with these partners, we expect to have taken significant steps towards a quantum network by the end of the project.

Acknowledging that the technology required is still at an early stage, the four parties involved in the collaboration say that they stand to benefit from joining forces right now.

Wojciech Kozlowski, a postdoctoral researcher at QuTech with responsibility for one of the work packages defined in the project, said: Every day we are working on finding answers to the question of how network operators, such as KPN or SURF, can deploy a quantum network, and what sort of services they can offer their users.

Although we are still in an early stage of development, we are already building the quantum internet ecosystem of the future by working with key partners. This ecosystem will prove crucial as our quantum network evolves into a fully-fledged quantum internet.

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has also awarded a new 4.5million grant to an interdisciplinary consortium including QuTech aiming to bring quantum technology closer to potential users across society through the "Quantum Inspire" platform.

The platform, based around a 50-qubit quantum computer, is set to gain a more intuitive and easily accessible user interface, with a view to future commercial use.

Lieven Vandersypen, the director of research at QuTech, said that the new program would see greater availability of Quantum Inspire to students, the general public, industry, and government.

"We hope that different people from all parts of society will interact with Quantum Inspire, so that we can work together to figure out the full range of possibilities offered to our society by quantum computing including which societal challenges it will be able to solve," Vandersypen added.

Read more here:
Netherlands team to build high-speed quantum network - Optics.org

BEIJING--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The preliminary round of the 2020-2021 ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge (ASC20-21) officially kicked off on November 16, 2020. More than 300 university teams from five continents registered to participate in this competition. Over the next two months, they will be challenged in several cutting-edge applications of Supercomputing and AI. The 20 teams that eventually make out of the preliminaries will participate in the finals from May 8 to 12, 2021 at Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China. During the finals, they will compete for various awards including the Champion, Silver Prize, Highest LINPACK, and e- Prize.

Among the registered participants for ASC20-21 are three prior champion teams: the SC19/SC20 champion team of Tsinghua University, the ISC20 champion team of University of Science and Technology of China, and the ASC19 champion of National Tsing Hua University. Other power competitors include teams from University of Washington (USA), University of Warsaw (Poland), Ural Federal University (Russia), Monash University (Australia), EAFIT University (Columbia) and so much more.

For the tasks of this preliminary round of merged ASC20 and ASC21, the organizing committee has retained the quantum computing simulation and language exam tasks from the ASC20, and added a new fascinating, cutting-edge task in astronomy -- searching for pulsars.

Pulsars are fast-spinning neutron stars, and remnants of collapsed super stars. Pulsars feature a high density and strong magnetic field. By observing and studying the extreme physic of pulsars, the scientists can delve into the mysterious space around black holes and detect the gravitational waves triggered from the intense merge of super massive black holes in distant galaxies. Because of the unique nature of pulsars, the Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded twice for pulsar-related discoveries. Using radio telescopes over the previous decades, astronomers have discovered nearly 3,000 pulsars with 700 being discovered by PRESTO, the open-source pulsar search and analysis software. In ASC20-21, the participants are asked to use PRESTO from its official website, and the observational data from Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), the worlds largest single-dish radio telescope located in Guizhou, China, operated by National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Participating teams should achieve the applications maximum parallel acceleration, while searching for a pulsar in the FAST observational data loaded in the computer cluster they build. Practically the teams will need to understand the pulsar search process, complete the search task, analyze the code, and optimize the PRESTO application execution, by minimizing the computing time and resources.

The quantum computing simulation task will require each participating team to use the QuEST (Quantum Exact Simulation Toolkit) running on computer cluster to simulate 30 qubits in two cases: quantum random circuits (random.c), and quantum fast Fourier transform circuits (GHZ_QFT.c). Quantum simulations provides a reliable platform for studying of quantum algorithms, which are particularly important because quantum computers are not practically available yet in the industry.

The Language Exam task will require all participating teams to train AI models on an English Cloze Test dataset, striving to achieve the highest "test scores". The dataset covers multiple levels of English language tests used in China.

This years ASC training camp will be held on November 30 to help the participating teams from all around the world prepare for the competition. HPC and AI experts from Chinese Academy of Sciences, Peng Cheng Laboratory, State Key Laboratory of High-end Server & Storage Technology will introduce in details the competition rules, computer cluster build and optimization, and provide guidance.

About ASC

The ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge is the worlds largest student supercomputer competition, sponsored and organized by Asia Supercomputer Community in China and supported by Asian, European, and American experts and institutions. The main objectives of ASC are to encourage exchange and training of young supercomputing talent from different countries, improve supercomputing applications and R&D capacity, boost the development of supercomputing, and promote technical and industrial innovation. The first ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge was held in 2012 and since has attracted nearly 10,000 undergraduates from all over the world. Learn more ASC at https://www.asc-events.org/.

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ASC20-21 Student Supercomputer Challenge Kickoff: Quantum Computing Simulations, AI Language Exam and Pulsar Searching with FAST - Business Wire

ACCESSWIRE2020-11-30

TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE /November 30, 2020 /01 Communique Laboratory Inc. (TSXV:ONE)(OTCQB:OONEF) (the "Company") one of the first-to-market, enterprise level cybersecurity providers for the quantum computing era today announced that the Company will be presenting at the upcoming virtual Benzinga Global Small Cap Conferenceon Tuesday, December 8th at 12:00PM ET and will also be hosting virtual one-to-one investor meetings with management. Complimentary investor registration and virtual one-to-one meeting requests can be accessed through the conference link above.

The inaugural Benzinga Global Small Cap Conference is planned for December 8th and 9th in an entirely virtual setting. Designed to bridge the gap between publicly traded companies, investors and traders, the Conference will enable small-cap companies to network and communicate with a broad and diverse investor base.

About IronCAP and IronCAP X:

IronCAP is at the forefront of the cyber security market and is designed to protect our customers from cyber-attacks. IronCAP's patent-pending cryptographic system is designed to protect users and enterprises against the ever-evolving illegitimate and malicious means of gaining access to their data today as well as in the future with the introduction of powerful quantum computers. Based on improved Goppa code-based encryption it is designed to be faster and more secure than current standards. It operates on conventional computer systems, so users are protected today while being secure enough to safeguard against future attacks from the world of quantum computers. An IronCAP API is available which allows vendors of a wide variety of vertical applications to easily transform their products to ensure their customers are safe from cyber-attacks today and from quantum computers in the future.

IronCAP X, a new cybersecurity product for email/file encryption, incorporating our patent-pending technology was made available for commercial use on April 23, 2020. The new product has two major differentiations from what is in the market today. Firstly, many offerings in today's market store users secured emails on email-servers for recipients to read, making email-servers a central target of cyber-attack. IronCAP X, on the other hand, delivers each encrypted message end-to-end to the recipients such that only the intended recipients can decrypt and read the message. Consumers' individual messages are protected, eliminating the hackers' incentive to attack email servers of email providers. Secondly, powered by our patent-pending IronCAP technology, we believe IronCAP Xis the world's first quantum-safe end-to-end email encryption system; secured against cyberattacks from today's systems and from quantum computers in the future. Consumers and businesses using our new products will have tomorrow's cybersecurity today.

About 01 Communique

Established in 1992, 01 Communique (TSX-V: ONE; OTCQB: OONEF) has always been at the forefront of technology. The Company's cyber security business unit focuses on post-quantum cybersecurity with the development of its IronCAP technology. IronCAP's patent-pending cryptographic system is an advanced Goppa code-based post-quantum cryptographic technology that can be implemented on classical computer systems as we know them today while at the same time can also safeguard against attacks in the future post-quantum world of computing. The Company's remote access business unit provides its customers with a suite of secure remote access services and products under its I'm InTouch and I'm OnCall product offerings. The remote access offerings are protected in the U.S.A. by its patents #6,928,479 / #6,938,076 / #8,234,701; in Canada by its patents #2,309,398 / #2,524,039 and in Japan by its patent #4,875,094. For more information, visit the Company's web site at http://www.ironcap.ca and http://www.01com.com.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements

Certain statements in this news release may constitute "forward-looking" statements which involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company, or industry results, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. When used in this news release, such statements use such words as "may", "will", "expect", "believe", "anticipate", "plan", "intend", "are confident" and other similar terminology. Such statements include statements regarding the business prospects of IronCAP X, the future of quantum computers and their impact on the Company's product offering, the functionality of the Company's products and the intended product lines for the Company's technology. These statements reflect current expectations regarding future events and operating performance and speak only as of the date of this news release. Forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties, should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results, and will not necessarily be accurate indications of whether or not such results will be achieved. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the matters discussed in the forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, a delay in the anticipated adoption of quantum computers and a corresponding delay in Q day, the ability for the Company to generate sales, and gain adoption of, IronCAP X, the ability of the Company to raise financing to pursue its business plan, competing products that provide a superior product, competitors with greater resources and the factors discussed under "Risk and Uncertainties" in the company's Management`s Discussion and Analysis document filed on SEDAR. Although the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are based upon what management of the Company believes are reasonable assumptions, the company cannot assure investors that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release, and the company assumes no obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances.

INVESTOR CONTACT:

Brian StringerChief Financial Officer01 Communique(905) 795-2888 x204Brian.stringer@01com.com

SOURCE:01 Communique Laboratory, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/618717/01-Communique-to-Present-at-the-Benzinga-Global-Small-Cap-Conference-on-December-8

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01 Communique to Present at the Benzinga Global Small Cap Conference on December 8 - IT News Online

1. Quantum computer race intensifies as alternative technology gains steam  Nature.com
2. Quantum Computing Market is Expected to Reach $2.2 Billion by 2026  GlobeNewswire
3. Quantum Computing Market 2020 Size, Demand, Share, Opportunities And Forecasts To 2026 | Major Giants ID Quantique, Toshiba Research Europe Ltd, Google,Inc., Microsoft Corporation  re:Jerusalem
4. Quantum Computing in Aerospace and Defense Market Statistics Shows Revolutionary growth in Coming decade | Want to Know Biggest Opportunity for Growth?  TechnoWeekly
5. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Quantum computer race intensifies as alternative technology gains steam - Nature.com

In a new realm of materials, PhD student Thanh Nguyen uses neutrons to hunt for exotic properties that could power real-world applications.

Thanh Nguyen is in the habit of breaking down barriers. Take languages, for instance: Nguyen, a third-year doctoral candidate in nuclear science and engineering (NSE), wanted to connect with other people and cultures for his work and social life, he says, so he learned Vietnamese, French, German, and Russian, and is now taking an MIT course in Mandarin. But this drive to push past obstacles really comes to the fore in his research, where Nguyen is trying to crack the secrets of a new and burgeoning branch of physics.

My dissertation focuses on neutron scattering on topological semimetals, which were only experimentally discovered in 2015, he says. They have very special properties, but because they are so novel, theres a lot thats unknown, and neutrons offer a unique perspective to probe their properties at a new level of clarity.

Topological materials dont fit neatly into conventional categories of substances found in everyday life. They were first materialized in the 1980s, but only became practical in the mid-2000s with deepened understanding of topology, which concerns itself with geometric objects whose properties remain the same even when the objects undergo extreme deformation. Researchers experimentally discovered topological materials even more recently, using the tools of quantum physics.

Within this domain, topological semimetals, which share qualities of both metals and semiconductors, are of special interest to Nguyen.They offer high levels of thermal and electric conductivity, and inherent robustness, which makes them very promising for applications in microelectronics, energy conversions, and quantum computing, he says.

Intrigued by the possibilities that might emerge from such unconventional physics, Nguyen is pursuing two related but distinct areas of research: On the one hand, Im trying to identify and then synthesize new, robust topological semimetals, and on the other, I want to detect fundamental new physics with neutrons and further design new devices.

My goal is to create programmable artificial structured topological materials, which can directly be applied as a quantum computer, says Thanh Nguyen. Credit: Gretchen Ertl

Reaching these goals over the next few years might seem a tall order. But at MIT, Nguyen has seized every opportunity to master the specialized techniques required for conducting large-scale experiments with topological materials, and getting results. Guided by his advisor,Mingda Li, the Norman C Rasmussen Assistant Professor and director of theQuantum Matter Groupwithin NSE, Nguyen was able to dive into significant research even before he set foot on campus.

The summer, before I joined the group, Mingda sent me on a trip to Argonne National Laboratory for a very fun experiment that used synchrotron X-ray scattering to characterize topological materials, recalls Nguyen. Learning the techniques got me fascinated in the field, and I started to see my future.

During his first two years of graduate school, he participated in four studies, serving as a lead author in three journal papers. In one notable project,described earlier this yearinPhysical Review Letters, Nguyen and fellow Quantum Matter Group researchers demonstrated, through experiments conducted at three national laboratories, unexpected phenomena involving the way electrons move through a topological semimetal, tantalum phosphide (TaP).

These materials inherently withstand perturbations such as heat and disorders, and can conduct electricity with a level of robustness, says Nguyen. With robust properties like this, certain materials can conductivity electricity better than best metals, and in some circumstances superconductors which is an improvement over current generation materials.

This discovery opens the door to topological quantum computing. Current quantum computing systems, where the elemental units of calculation are qubits that perform superfast calculations, require superconducting materials that only function in extremely cold conditions. Fluctuations in heat can throw one of these systems out of whack.

The properties inherent to materials such as TaP could form the basis of future qubits, says Nguyen. He envisions synthesizing TaP and other topological semimetals a process involving the delicate cultivation of these crystalline structures and then characterizing their structural and excitational properties with the help of neutron and X-ray beam technology, which probe these materials at the atomic level. This would enable him to identify and deploy the right materials for specific applications.

My goal is to create programmable artificial structured topological materials, which can directly be applied as a quantum computer, says Nguyen. With infinitely better heat management, these quantum computing systems and devices could prove to be incredibly energy efficient.

Energy efficiency and its benefits have long concerned Nguyen. A native of Montreal, Quebec, with an aptitude for math and physics and a concern for climate change, he devoted his final year of high school to environmental studies. I worked on a Montreal initiative to reduce heat islands in the city by creating more urban parks, he says. Climate change mattered to me, and I wanted to make an impact.

At McGill University, he majored in physics. I became fascinated by problems in the field, but I also felt I could eventually apply what I learned to fulfill my goals of protecting the environment, he says.

In both classes and research, Nguyen immersed himself in different domains of physics. He worked for two years in a high-energy physics lab making detectors for neutrinos, part of a much larger collaboration seeking to verify the Standard Model. In the fall of his senior year at McGill, Nguyens interest gravitated toward condensed matter studies. I really enjoyed the interplay between physics and chemistry in this area, and especially liked exploring questions in superconductivity, which seemed to have many important applications, he says. That spring, seeking to add useful skills to his research repertoire, he worked at Ontarios Chalk River Laboratories, where he learned to characterize materials using neutron spectroscopes and other tools.

These academic and practical experiences served to propel Nguyen toward his current course of graduate study. Mingda Li proposed an interesting research plan, and although I didnt know much about topological materials, I knew they had recently been discovered, and I was excited to enter the field, he says.

Nguyen has mapped out the remaining years of his doctoral program, and they will prove demanding. Topological semimetals are difficult to work with, he says. We dont yet know the optimal conditions for synthesizing them, and we need to make these crystals, which are micrometers in scale, in quantities large enough to permit testing.

With the right materials in hand, he hopes to develop a qubit structure that isnt so vulnerable to perturbations, quickly advancing the field of quantum computing so that calculations that now take years might require just minutes or seconds, he says. Vastly higher computational speeds could have enormous impacts on problems like climate, or health, or finance that have important ramifications for society. If his research on topological materials benefits the planet or improves how people live, says Nguyen, I would be totally happy.

Originally posted here:
Cracking the Secrets of an Emerging Branch of Physics: Exotic Properties to Power Real-World Applications - SciTechDaily