M Squared, the photonics and quantum technology developer, today announces a significant new financing of 32.5m as it expands its backers to support its growth and technology developments.

Santander UK will be providing a 20m debt facility, allowing M Squareds founders and management team, led by Dr Graeme Malcolm OBE, to fund the acquisition of the substantial part of BGFs current shareholding along with fuelling the next stage in business and technological growth. The newly formed Scottish National Investment Bank will also support M Squared with 12.5m of growth capital.

Commenting on the transaction,Richard Mathison, Structured Finance Director, Santander UK said:Santander is delighted to have provided M Squared with 20m of debt facilities to support their strategic buyout and future growth ambitions. M Squared is a truly unique, cutting-edge, business driven by a high calibre management team, who we have got to know well over the last 10 months. Santanders debt structure provided was specifically tailored to M Squareds needs and ambitions, alongside funding provided by the Scottish National Investment Bank.

This significant investment from the newly established Scottish National Investment Bank - which is the first investment being made by the Bank - will enable M Squared to further advance its research and development. This is key to upscaling its pioneering work in quantum innovation alongside its technologies to help tackle climate change. The flexibility shown by the Scottish National Investment Bank and its patient capital approach aligned strongly with M Squareds funding requirements.

M Squareds innovations are addressing global scientific and technology challenges in fields as diverse as climate change, healthcare, quantum computing and virtual reality. Therefore, M Squareds activities will make a contribution to all three of the Scottish National Investment Banks proposed core missions to support Scotlands transition to net zero, build communities and promote equality, and harness innovation to enable our people to flourish.

Eilidh Mactaggart, CEO of the Scottish National Investment Bank said:This Glasgow based business is at the cutting edge of innovation and is a recognised world-leader in its field with huge growth potential. It is a great fit with our missions and our investment will create real economic benefit in Scotland. We worked collaboratively to provide an investment solution tailored to M Squareds needs, and our patient capital approach meant we were able to take the longer-term view that was needed. We are hugely excited about the future for M Squared and look forward to working with Graeme and his team supporting the next phase of its growth.

Earlier this year, M Squared announced it is leading the UKs largest industry-led commercial quantum computing project as part of an Innovate UK Challenge fund,DISCOVERY. M Squared has also leveraged investment as part of the projectSquare meaning that total investment has reached 50m in the year to date despite the Covid-19 pandemic.

M Squared is now at the forefront of UK efforts to commercialise revolutionary quantum technology considered a major component of central governments commitment to research and development and its future industrial strategy. This transaction provides the financial strength and independence for the business to play a significant role in the next stage of this technologys commercialisation.

Dr Graeme Malcolm OBE, Founder & CEO of M Squared, said:M Squared makes the world's purest light - technology that has transformative, real-world, applications that can take on the climate emergency, greatly improve biomedical imaging, realise the next evolution of semiconductors, and now truly unlock the coming quantum age.

Scotland is at the heart of the UKs advanced science and technology sectors and sitting alongside world-leading universities and commercial partners it has become a critical hub of excellence from which we can continue expanding globally.

Our commercial and technological potential is enormous and with this transaction we have the ideal financial and structural platform to progress and realise substantial growth and launch major new developments. We are delighted to now be working with both Santander UK and the Scottish National Investment Bank, alongside continued support from BGF, on funding a shared goal to innovate and scale.

BGF will realise the majority of its existing shareholding in M Squared, but will continue to retain a meaningful stake going forward having first invested in the business in 2012 as a long-term partner.

Patrick Graham Head of BGF for Central Scotland and Northern Ireland said:M Squared, one of BGFs first investments, received 6.4m across three rounds of funding over the course of the past eight years. The company has grown ten-fold since, crystalising a strong return for BGF. Our long-term view on investment and supporting growth via follow-on funding can provide a strong platform for businesses like M Squared to realise their full potential. Our flexible model also allows us to collaborate with other institutions and we are pleased to be partnering with both Santander and the Scottish National Investment Bank in its first investment. We are also delighted to continue as an equity shareholder in M Squared and look forward to supporting the management team and the business in the next phase of its growth journey.

M Squareds strategic stakeholders including Scottish Enterprise, the University of Strathclyde and the University of St Andrews were highly supportive of this new funding development which represents one of Scotlands most ambitious funding projects this year and will further help Glasgow gain recognition as a global location for quantum and many other advanced technologies.

Stuart Malcolm, M Squareds General Counsel, who led the transaction said:This financing is the culmination of over 18 months determined effort and commitment to ensure that M Squared is now supremely well placed for the next stage in our journey. A challenging and technical transaction such as this, involving a number of stakeholders and inputs, required a proactive and agile advisory team and our thanks go out to all the team members in their efforts and determination to complete this dynamic transaction.

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M Squared Receives Financing to Accelerate Growth and Advance Quantum Technologies - Novus Light Technologies Today

With artificial intelligence and automation penetrating more and more markets, Dr. Tomer Simon, a national technology officer at Microsoft encourages everyone, and especially Israelis, to become more digitally literate. As one of the companys 45 global NTOs, Simon works with governments and regulators to help work on national technologies and infrastructures. On top of this, he also leads the AI quantum computing and 5G technology discussions in Israel to help open more markets for Microsoft around the country.

Simon spoke to CTech about some of the ways that humans can prepare for the jobs of the future. Digital literacy is one of the foundations of our society today, Simon told CTech. I think its important that people should take the time and see how they upscale, whether professionally or digitally.

As sectors become digital, Simon says that consumers can enjoy the democratization of products and services through better and safer access. For example, telemedicine services have soared 800% in 2020 as people stay home due to Covid-19 concerns. Simon says its an example of how doctors can help patients stay safe from wherever they arewithout the need for the sick or elderly to physically travel, spend money on transport, or lose productive hours from a workday.

For doctors who can see more patients in a day and patients who can get a checkout without risking their health, the move to online is a no-brainer.

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We must improve our digital literacy to compete in the future of work, says Microsoft futurist - CTech

DUBLIN, Oct. 12, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Quantum Networking: A Ten-year Forecast and Opportunity Analysis" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This report presents detailed ten-year forecasts for quantum networking opportunities and deployments over the coming decade.

Today there increasing talk about the Quantum Internet. This network will have the same geographical breadth of coverage as today's Internet but where the Internet carries bits, the Quantum Internet will carry qubits, represented by quantum states. The Quantum Internet will provide a powerful platform for communications among quantum computers and other quantum devices. It will also further enable a quantum version of the Internet-of-Things. Finally, quantum networks can be the most secure networks ever built - completely invulnerable if constructed properly.

Already there are sophisticated roadmaps showing how the Quantum Internet will come to be. At the present time, however, quantum networking in the real world consists of three research programs and commercialization efforts: Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) adds unbreakable coding of key distribution to public-key encryption. Cloud/network access to quantum computers is core to the business strategies of leading quantum computer companies. Quantum sensor networks promise enhanced navigation and positioning; more sensitive medical imaging modalities, etc. This report provides power ten-year forecasts of all three of these sectors.

This report provides a detailed quantitative analysis of where the emerging opportunities can be found today and how they will emerge in the future:

With regard to the scope of the report, the focus is, of course, on quantum networking opportunities of all kinds. It looks especially, however, on three areas: quantum key distribution (QKD,) quantum computer networking/quantum clouds, and quantum sensor networks. The report also includes in the forecasts breakouts by all the end-user segments of this market including military and intelligence, law enforcement, banking and financial services, and general business applications, as well as niche applications. There are also breakouts by hardware, software and services as appropriate.

In addition, there is also some discussion of the latest research into quantum networking, including the critical work on quantum repeaters. Quantum repeaters allow entanglement between quantum devices over long distances. Most experts predict repeaters will start to prototype in real-world applications in about five years, but this is far from certain.

This report will be essential reading for equipment companies, service providers, telephone companies, data center managers, cybersecurity firms, IT companies and investors of various kinds.

Key Topics Covered:

Executive SummaryE.1 Goals, Scope and Methodology of this ReportE.1.1 A Definition of Quantum NetworkingE.2 Quantum Networks Today: QKD, Quantum Clouds and Quantum Networked SensorsE.2.1 Towards the Quantum Internet: Possible Business OpportunitiesE.2.2 Quantum Key DistributionE.2.3 Quantum Computer Networks/Quantum CloudsE.2.4 Quantum Sensor NetworksE.3 Summary of Quantum Networking Market by Type of NetworkE.4 The Need for Quantum Repeaters to Realize Quantum Networking's PotentialE.5 Plan of this Report

Chapter One: Ten-year Forecast of Quantum Key Distribution1.1 Opportunities and Drivers for Quantum Key Distribution Networks1.1.1 QKD vs. PQC1.1.2 Evolution of QKD1.1.3 Technology Assessment1.2 Ten-year Forecasts of QKD Markets1.2.1 QKD Equipment and Services1.2.2 A Note on Mobile QKD1.3 Key Takeaways from this Chapter

Chapter Two: Ten-Year Forecast of Quantum Computing Clouds2.1 Quantum Computing: State of the Art2.2 Current State of Quantum Clouds and Networks2.3 Commercialization of Cloud Access to Quantum Computers2.4 Ten-Year Forecast for Cloud Access to Quantum Computers2.4.1 Penetration of Clouds in the Quantum Computing Space2.4.2 Revenue from Network Equipment for Quantum Computer Networks by End-User Industry2.4.3 Revenue from Network Equipment Software by End-User Industry2.5 Key Takeaways from this Chapter

Chapter Three: Ten-Year Forecast of Quantum Sensor Networks3.1 The Emergence of Networked Sensors3.1.1 The Demand for Quantum Sensors Seems to be Real3.2 The Future of Networked Sensors3.3 Forecasts for Networked Quantum Sensors3.4 Five Companies that will Shape the Future of the Quantum Sensor Business: Some Speculations

Chapter Four: Towards the Quantum Internet4.1 A Roadmap for the Quantum Internet4.1.1 The Quantum Internet in Europe4.1.2 The Quantum Internet in China4.1.3 The Quantum Internet in the U.S.4.2 Evolution of Repeater Technology: Ten-year Forecast4.3 Evolution of the Quantum Network4.4 About the Analyst4.5 Acronyms and Abbreviations Used In this Report

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/rksyxu

About ResearchAndMarkets.comResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research.

Media Contact:

Research and MarketsLaura Wood, Senior Managerpress@researchandmarkets.com

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Ten-year Forecasts for Quantum Networking Opportunities and Deployments Over the Coming Decade - WFMZ Allentown

Sixteen years ago a group of material scientists and engineers at General Electric banded together to reinvent the circuit breaker. Now, Menlo Microsystems, the spin-off commercializing that technology, is ready to bring its revolutionary new switches to market, with huge implications for everything from 5G technologies to quantum computing.

Based in Irvine, California, Menlo Micro takes its name from the Menlo Park, New Jersey research lab where Thomas Edison patented the first light switch back in 1893 and the companys ties to GE run deep.

Researchers at GE spent more than a decade working internally on Menlo Micros core technology, a novel process that applies semiconductor manufacturing techniques to the production of micro electro-mechanical systems, before spinning it out into a new business five years ago.

Using a novel alloy, Menlo Micro is able to reduce the size of the switches it makes to 50 microns by 50 microns, or roughly the width of a human hair. This miniaturization can enable hardware manufacturers to come up with completely new designs for a host of products that used to require much larger components.

The micro electro-mechanical system that we use to make this thats not new, said Russ Garcia, the companys chief executive. The problem was the first level innovation is how do you take a mechanical switch like the light switch or a relay and scale that down to a wafer.

Many companies have tried to make MEMs contact switches, spending hundreds of millions of dollars, but Garcia said that the reliability and durability of the switches was always an issue. The material science behind Menlos switches solves the problem, he said.

Menlos switches pack lots and lots of MEMS relays onto a single chip that can function like a massive mechanical relay, reducing something that was the size of a fist to something the size of a microchip.

The companys founders think the potential uses are pretty limitless, thanks to the massive size reduction and increased durability that its switches offer.

Closeup of a Menlo Micro switch. Image Credit: Menlo Micro

One way to look at this is in edge and IOT applications, said company co-founder Chris Giovanniello, a former vice president of business development at GE Ventures and Menlo Micros current senior vice president of worldwide marketing. What we tend to think about and what most of the industry thinks about is low energy Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and low power processing for decision making. Once youve sensed it, communicated it and made a decision, you have to do something about it.

Initially Menlo Micro spun out from GE with Giovanniello and co-founders including chief technology officer Chris Keimel and Jeff Baloun, the senior vice president of operations. Garcia, who saw the companys initial pitch at a semiconductor conference where GE was touting the technology, was brought on board by one of Menlo Micros early investors, Paladin Capital Group.

Paul Conley of Paladin Capital sent me this deck and said Wow there might be something there. We met Chris and then met up with the other Chris they wanted me to help out with strategy, Garcia said. He wound up coming on board as a founding executive.

Current solid state technologies tasked with making something happen based on the data currently use more power than the rest of the systems that theyre tied to. Menlo Micros chips would substantially reduce energy loss and improve the efficiency of entire systems, he said.

If you think of the light switch in your house, its two metal contacts that come together. If that contact is really good and clean the electricity flows through very efficiently and when you turn it off no electricity can flow through and [nothing] happens at all, said Garcia, a longtime executive in the MEMS industry. In a semiconductor, theres loss in that contact. When you run a transistor on it it allows the energy to flow through but loses some of that energy in heat, and when you turn it off it allows some of that energy to flow through. When you take the billions of switches all of that incremental energy is completely lost.

The benefits of the technology mean demand from the defense industry, which wants to put the new switches in radar, radio and satellite networks. Commercial applications include Wi-Fi connectivity, 5G cell networks and for radio frequency and microwave switching. Consumers could see the switches in cell phones meaning fewer dropped calls, higher speeds and capacity for data, and longer battery life.

Menlo has already sent samples from its production line to 30 lead customers in aerospace and defense, telecommunications and test and measurement. And the company has raised $44 million in new funding from investors, including Nest founder Tony Fadells Future Shape Group, to boost its production capacity to meet potential demand.

The concept of an ideal switch was theoretical something companies have been working to achieve for decades until Menlo Micro, said Marianne Wu, the former head of GE Ventures and current managing director of 40 North Ventures, which led Menlo Micros latest round. We are incredibly excited to work with such a dynamic, experienced team on a core technology that is disrupting nearly every industry.

Series of Menlo Micro switches on a circuit board. Image Credit: Menlo Micro

Over the last 30 months, Menlo Micro said it has completed the transfer and qualification of its manufacturing process, moving from a four-inch research fab to a new eight-inch high-volume manufacturing line.

That means the company is able to increase production for its initial products and boost its capacity. With the qualification in hand, the company expects to bring production up to over 100,000 units per month by the end of 2020 and reach production capacity for millions of switches per month in 2021.

So beyond telecommunications and defense, there are target markets in energy storage, automotive and aerospace because of the miniaturization while quantum computing companies are interested in the technology because of its durability.

The relay is a large mechanical device that you can hold in your hand and used in many applications for turning on and off the power that goes to an industrial piece of equipment to your car to motors that need to be driven, said Giovanniello. Theyre very hard to integrate because theyre so big. We can take the electrical characteristics of having a true metal to metal on low-loss connection and then, when its open theres an air gap that no current can flow through We can integrate [the switches] into completely different architectures.

Ultimately, Giovanniello said the go-to-market strategy is to focus on the rule of 99.

Were able to reduce the size, the weight and the power of the box that [the switch] is going into by up to 99%. Thats a huge improvement in infrastructure and cost, he said.

For companies developing quantum computers, the value proposition is not just about the size of the MEMS, but the durability of the alloy that Menlo Micro has developed. For quantum, you have to have devices that operate at close to absolute zero Semiconductors dont work down to those temperatures so they use old-fashioned mechanical relays [which] can take hours to get back to temperature, Giovanniello said. Our materials are so robust they work [at temperatures] down to a few milikelvins.

Its this flexibility and the potential redesign of old industrial technologies that havent been updated for nearly a century that has enabled the company to bring in $78 million in funding from investors, including Piva, Paladin Capital Group, Vertical Venture Partners, Future Shape and strategic investors like Corning and Microsemi.

For 40+ years, the industry has been searching for a switch that has the perfect combination of the electromechanical relay and the silicon transistor, said Tony Fadell, in a statement. [This technology] is a tiny, efficient, reliable micro-mechanical switch with unmatched RF-performance and, counterintuitively, high-power handling of 1,000s of Watts. As our world moves to the electrification and wireless of everything, Menlo Micros deep innovation is already triggering massive cross-industry upheaval.

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Menlo Micro, a startup bringing semiconductor tech to the humble switch, is ready for its closeup - TechCrunch

Engineering | News releases | Research | Science

October 6, 2020

Aerial shot of the University of Washingtons Seattle campus.Mark Stone/University of Washington

Scientists can have ambitious goals: curing disease, exploring distant worlds, clean-energy revolutions. In physics and materials research, some of these ambitious goals are to make ordinary-sounding objects with extraordinary properties: wires that can transport power without any energy loss, or quantum computers that can perform complex calculations that todays computers cannot achieve. And the emerging workbenches for the experiments that gradually move us toward these goals are 2D materials sheets of material that are a single layer of atoms thick.

In a paper published Sept. 14 in the journal Nature Physics, a team led by the University of Washington reports that carefully constructed stacks of graphene a 2D form of carbon can exhibit highly correlated electron properties. The team also found evidence that this type of collective behavior likely relates to the emergence of exotic magnetic states.

Weve created an experimental setup that allows us to manipulate electrons in the graphene layers in a number of exciting new ways, said co-senior author Matthew Yankowitz, a UW assistant professor of physics and of materials science and engineering, as well as a faculty researcher at the UWClean Energy Institute.

Yankowitz led the team with co-senior author Xiaodong Xu, a UW professor of physics and of materials science and engineering. Xu is also a faculty researcher with the UW Molecular Engineering and Sciences Institute, the UW Institute for Nano-Engineered Systems and the Clean Energy Institute.

Since 2D materials are one layer of atoms thick, bonds between atoms only form in two dimensions and particles like electrons can only move like pieces on a board game: side-to-side, front-to-back or diagonally, but not up or down. These restrictions can imbue 2D materials with properties that their 3D counterparts lack, and scientists have been probing 2D sheets of different materials to characterize and understand these potentially useful qualities.

But over the past decade, scientists like Yankowitz have also started layering 2D materials like a stack of pancakes and have discovered that, if stacked and rotated in a particular configuration and exposed to extremely low temperatures, these layers can exhibit exotic and unexpected properties.

Illustration of a moir pattern that emerges upon stacking and rotating two sheets of bilayer graphene. Correlated electronic states with magnetic ordering emerge in twisted double bilayer graphene over a small range of twist angles, and can be tuned with gating and electric field.Matthew Yankowitz

The UW team worked with building blocks of bilayer graphene: two sheets of graphene naturally layered together. They stacked one bilayer on top of another for a total of four graphene layers and twisted them so that the layout of carbon atoms between the two bilayers were slightly out of alignment. Past research has shown that introducing these small twist angles between single layers or bilayers of graphene can have big consequences for the behavior of their electrons. With specific configurations of the electric field and charge distribution across the stacked bilayers, electrons display highly correlated behaviors. In other words, they all start doing the same thing or displaying the same properties at the same time.

In these instances, it no longer makes sense to describe what an individual electron is doing, but what all electrons are doing at once, said Yankowitz.

Its like having a room full of people in which a change in any one persons behavior will cause everyone else to react similarly, said lead author Minhao He, a UW doctoral student in physics and a former Clean Energy Institute fellow.

Quantum mechanics underlies these correlated properties, and since the stacked graphene bilayers have a density of more than 1012, or one trillion, electrons per square centimeter, a lot of electrons are behaving collectively.

Optical microscopy image of a twisted double bilayer graphene device.Matthew Yankowitz

The team sought to unravel some of the mysteries of the correlated states in their experimental setup. At temperatures of just a few degrees above absolute zero, the team discovered that they could tune the system into a type of correlated insulating state where it would conduct no electrical charge. Near these insulating states, the team found pockets of highly conducting states with features resembling superconductivity.

Though other teams have recently reported these states, the origins of these features remained a mystery. But the UW teams work has found evidence for a possible explanation. They found that these states appeared to be driven by a quantum mechanical property of electrons called spin a type of angular momentum. In regions near the correlated insulating states, they found evidence that all the electron spins spontaneously align. This may indicate that, near the regions showing correlated insulating states, a form of ferromagnetism is emerging not superconductivity. But additional experiments would need to verify this.

These discoveries are the latest example of the many surprises that are in store when conducting experiments with 2D materials.

Much of what were doing in this line of research is to try to create, understand and control emerging electronic states, which can be either correlated or topological, or possess both properties, said Xu. There could be a lot we can do with these states down the road a form of quantum computing, a new energy-harvesting device, or some new types of sensors, for example and frankly we wont know until we try.

In the meantime, expect stacks, bilayers and twist angles to keep making waves.

Co-authors are UW researchers Yuhao Li and Yang Liu; UW physics doctoral student and Clean Energy Institute fellow Jiaqi Cai; and K. Watanabe and T. Taniguchi with the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan. The research was funded by the UW Molecular Engineering Materials Center, a National Science Foundation Materials Research Science and Engineering Center; the China Scholarship Council; the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan; and the Japan Science and Technology Agency.

###

For more information, contact Xu at xuxd@uw.edu and Yankowitz at myank@uw.edu.

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All together now: Experiments with twisted 2D materials catch electrons behaving collectively - UW News

A new business intelligence report released by Global Marketerswith the title Topological Quantum Computing Market Insights by Application, Product Type, Competitive Landscape & Regional Forecast 2026 is designed covering the micro-level of analysis by manufacturers and key business segments. The Global Topological Quantum Computing Market examination analysis offers vigorous visions to conclude and study the market size, market hopes, and competitive surroundings. The research is resultant through primary and secondary statistics sources and it comprises both qualitative and quantitative detailing.

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The study conducts a SWOT analysis to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the key players in the Topological Quantum Computing market. Further, the Topological Quantum Computing report conducts an intricate examination of drivers and restraints operating in the market. The report also evaluates the trends pragmatic in the parent market, besides the macro-economic indicators, current factors, and market appeal with regard to different segments. The report predicts the influence of different industry aspects on the Topological Quantum Computing market segments and regions.

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Detailed overview of the Topological Quantum Computing market

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Global Topological Quantum Computing Market Demand is Increasing Rapidly in Recent Years With Advanced Technology to Improve Product Facilities. -...

In the fifth edition of the Logistics Trend Radar, DHL once more has revealed 29 key trends that will impact the logistics industry over the next years. The Report is the result of an extensive analysis of macro and micro trends, as well as the insights from a large partner network including research institutes, tech players, startups, and customers.

For us as logistics experts, it is important to forecast the challenges ahead and envision possible solutions so that we may best advise our customers. The mega trends that will continue to engage us are not unfamiliar: new technologies, growing e-commerce and sustainability, says Katja Busch, Chief Commercial Officer, DHL. But some areas will evolve faster than others, so there is the need to understand the underlying trends and their impact on logistics not least because of the impact of COVID-19 on global commerce and the entire workforce. As a world leader in logistics, we have the insights and the expertise to evaluate the situation.

Well over 20,000 logistics professionals and technology experts shared their perspectives on the future of the industry when visiting the DHL Innovations Centers over the last two years. The findings are consolidated and reflected on the Logistics Trend Radar which acts as a dynamic and strategic foresight tool that tracks the evolution of trends spotted in past editions, identifying present and future trends with every update.

The next big challenge will be future proofing the logistics workforce through training and upskilling in increasingly technologically sophisticated operations. This will take center stage on the strategic agendas of supply chain organizations in the years to come, said Matthias Heutger, Senior Vice President, Global Head of Innovation & Commercial Development at DHL. The Logistics Trend Radar serves as seismograph for future trends. Based on data from the last seven years, we can make longer-term forecasts and thus support our partners and customers to create roadmaps for their business as well as helping to structure and catalyze further industry-leading research and innovations. In this edition, we already see the impact of COVID-19 is accelerating trends that were already well underway big data analytics, robotics and automation, and IoT, all of which are underpinned by steady progress in artificial intelligence.

Acceleration of transformation processes

The fifth-edition Logistics Trend Radar indicates that we are experiencing an overall stabilization of trends from the past four years. However, with the logistics industry weathering the current global pandemic, transformation processes have been accelerated. COVID-19 has driven changes regarding recent logistics innovation, automation, and digital work more rapidly and has accelerated industry digitalization by years. Conversely, many trends initially perceived as disruptive game-changers for the logistics industry have yet to deliver on their disruptive potential. Self-driving vehicles and drones continue to be held back by legislative and technical challenges as well as limited social acceptance. Logistics Marketplaces are stabilizing on a few leading platforms, and established forwarders are entering the game with their own digital offerings, backed with robust global logistics networks. From cloud computing to collaborative robotics, big data analytics, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things, logistics professionals have to make sense of a vast market of novel technology. Modernizing all touchpoints of supply chains, from an elegant digital or customer journey, through fulfillment transport and final mile delivery is the new imperative for long-term success. Those who adopt and scale new technology and upskill workforces fastest, will have a competitive advantage on the market.

E-commerce growth continues to advance innovation and sustainability agendas

E-commerce is still growing rapidly and yet represents only a fraction of global consumer retail spending. Business-to-business e-commerce is expected to follow suit and dwarfs the consumer market size by a factor of three. The coronavirus pandemic has served not only to accelerate both e-commerce growth and supply chain innovation agendas. Key moves to scale and adopt new technology like intelligent physical automation, IoT-powered visibility tools, and predictive capabilities from AI will ultimately determine the ability to fulfill heightened customer demands and secure industry leadership positions in the future.

With governments, cities and solution providers commit to cut down on CO2 emissions and waste, sustainability now is an imperative for the logistics industry. Indicated by the increasing demand on sustainable solutions to reduce waste, leverage new propulsion techniques and optimize facilities, it is also on top of the supply chain agendas. Today, 90+ national bans on single-use plastics exists and bulky packaging causing 40 percent parcel void space, making a rethinking of the packaging inevitable. Sustainable Logistics optimization of processes, materials, new propulsion techniques, and smart facilities provide huge potential for logistics to become more environmentally friendly. Smart Containerization in transportation will also be important in developing environmentally friendly formats for delivery in congested cities.

DHL regularly publishes the Logistics Trend Radar as a key instrument for the global logistics community. Both within DHL and across industry, it has become an acclaimed benchmark for strategy and innovation, as well as a key tool to shape the direction of specific trends, most recently packaging, 5G, robotics and digital twins.

The fifth edition DHL Logistics Trend Radar, including information on deep dives and projects, is available for free download atwww.dhl.com/trendradar

SOURCE: DHL

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Artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing, sustainability & global volatility: DHL Logistics Trend Radar unveils trends that will shape...

Our right and left hands are reflections of one another, but they are not equal. To hide one hand perfectly behind the other, we must face our palms in opposite directions.

In physics, the concept of handedness (or chirality) works similarly: It is a property of objects that are not dynamically equivalent to their mirror images. An object that can coincide with its mirror-image twin in every coordinate, such as a dumbbell or a spoon, is not chiral.

Because our hands are chiral, they do not interact with other objects and space in the exact same way. In nature, you will find this property in things like proteins, spiral galaxies and most elementary particles.

These different-handed object pairs reveal some puzzling asymmetries in the way our universe works. For example, the weak forcethe force responsible for nuclear decay has an effect only on particles that are left-handed. Also, life itselfevery plant and creature we knowis built almost exclusively with right-handed sugars and left-handed amino acids.

If you have anything with a dual principle, it can be related to chirality, says Penlope Rodrguez, a postdoctoral researcher at the Physics Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. This is not exclusive to biology, chemistry or physics. Chirality is of the universe.

Chirality was discovered in 1848 by biomedical scientist Louis Pasteur. He noticed that right-handed and left-handed crystals formed when racemic acid dried out.

He separated them, one by one, into two samples, and dissolved them again. Although both were chemically identical, one sample consistently rotated polarized light clockwise, while the other did it counterclockwise.

Pasteur referred to chirality as dissymmetry at the time, and he speculated that this phenomenonconsistently found in organic compoundswas a prerequisite for the handed chemistry of life. He was right.

In 1904, scientist Lord Kelvin introduced the word chirality into chemistry, borrowing it from the Greek kher, or hand.

Chirality is an intrinsic property of nature, says Riina Aav, Professor at Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia. Molecules in our bodily receptors are chiral. This means that our organism reacts selectively to the spatial configuration of molecules it interacts with.

Understanding the difference between right-chiral and left-chiral objects is important for many scientific applications. Scientists use the property of chirality to produce safer pharmaceuticals, build biocompatible metallic nanomaterials, and send binary messages in quantum computing (a field called spintronics).

Physicists often talk about three mirror symmetries in nature: charge (which can be positive or negative), time (which can go forward or backward) and parity (which can be right- or left-handed).

Gravity, electromagnetism and the strong nuclear force are ambidextrous, treating particles equally regardless of their handedness. But, as physicist Chien-Shiung Wu experimentally proved in 1956, the weak nuclear force plays favorites.

For a completely unknown reason, the weak nuclear force only interacts with left-handed particles, says Marco Drewes, a professor at Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. Why that might be is one of the big questions in physics.

Research groups are exploring the idea that such an asymmetry could have influenced the origin of the preferred handedness in biomolecules observed by Pasteur. There is a symmetry breaking that gives birth to a molecular arrangement, which eventually evolves until it forms DNA, right-handed sugars and left-handed amino acids, Rodrguez says.

From an evolutionary perspective, this would mean that chirality is a useful feature for living organisms, making it easier for proteins and nucleic acids to self-replicate due to the preferred handedness of their constituent biomolecules.

Every time an elementary particle is detected, an intrinsic property called its spin must be in one of two possible states. The spin of a right-chiral particle points along the particles direction of motion, while the spin of a left-chiral particle points opposite to the particles direction of motion.

A chiral twin has been found for every matter and antimatter particle in the Standard Modelwith the exception of neutrinos. Researchers have only ever observed left-handed neutrinos and right-handed antineutrinos. If no right-handed neutrinos exist, the fact that neutrinos have mass could indicate that they function as their own antiparticles. It could also mean that neutrinos get their mass in a different way from the other particles.

Maybe the neutrino masses come from a special Higgs boson that only talks to neutrinos, says, Andr de Gouva, a professor at Northwestern University. There are many other kinds of possible answers, but they all indicate that there are other particles out there.

The difference between left- and right-handed could have influenced another broken symmetry: the current predominance of matter over antimatter in our universe.

Right-handed neutrinos could be responsible for the fact that there is matter in the universe at all, Drewes says. It could be that they prefer to decay into matter over antimatter.

According to de Gouva, the main lesson that chirality teaches scientists is that we should always be prepared to be surprised. The big question is whether asymmetry is a property of our universe, or a property of the laws of nature, he says. We should always be willing to admit that our best ideas are wrong; nature does not do what we think is best.

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Nature through the looking glass - Symmetry magazine

This report studies the Quantum Computing Market with many aspects of the industry like the market size, market status, market trends and forecast, the report also provides brief information of the competitors and the specific growth opportunities with key market drivers. Find the complete Quantum Computing Market analysis segmented by companies, region, type and applications in the report.

Market Segment by Companies: D-Wave Systems Inc., QX Branch, International Business Machines Corporation, Cambridge Quantum Computing Limited, 1QB Information Technologies, QC Ware, Corp., StationQ Microsoft, Rigetti Computing, Google Inc., River Lane Research, and more

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Quantum Computing Market Analysis Industry Size, Share, Growth, Demand and Forecast to 2027- D-Wave Systems Inc., QX Branch, International Business...

It used to be easy to tell the American and Chinese economies apart. One was innovative, one made clones. One was a free market while the other demanded payments to a political party and its leadership, a corrupt wealth generating scam that by some estimates has netted top leaders billions of dollars. One kept the talent borders porous acting as a magnet for the worlds top brains while the other interviewed you in a backroom at the airport before imprisoning you on sedition charges (okay, that might have been both).

The comparison was always facile yes, but it was easy and at least directionally accurate if failing on the specifics.

Now though, the country that exported exploding batteries is pioneering quantum computing, while the country that pioneered the internet now builds planes that fall out of the sky (and good news, weve identified even more planes that might fall out of the sky at an airport near you!)

TikToks success is many things, but it is quite frankly just an embarrassment for the United States. There are thousands of entrepreneurs and hundreds of venture capitalists swarming Silicon Valley and the other American innovation hubs looking for the next great social app or building it themselves. But the power law of user growth and investor returns happens to reside in Haidian, Beijing. ByteDance through its local apps in China and overseas apps like TikTok is the consumer investor return of the past decade (theres a reason why all the IPOs this seasons are enterprise SaaS).

Its a win that you cant chalk up just to industrial policy. Unlike in semiconductors or other capital-intensive industries where Beijing can offer billions in incentives to spur development, ByteDance builds apps. It distributes them on app stores across the world. It has exactly the same tools available to it that every entrepreneur with an Apple Developer account has access to. There is no Made in China 2025 plan to build and popularize a consumer app like TikTok (you literally cant plan for consumer success like that). Instead, its a well-executed product thats addictive to hundreds of millions of people.

So much as China protected its industry from overseas competitors like Google and Amazon through market-entry barriers, America is now protecting its entrenched incumbents from overseas competitors like TikTok. Were demanding joint ventures and local cloud data sovereignty just as the Communist Party has demanded for years.

Hell, were apparently demanding a $5 billion tax payment from ByteDance, which the president says will fund patriotic education for youth. The president says a lot of things of course, but at least the $5 billion price point has been confirmed by Oracle in its press release over night (what the tax revenue will actually be used for is anyones guess). If you followed the recent Hong Kong protests for a long time, you will remember that patriotic youth education was some of the original tinder for those demonstrations back in 2012. What comes around, goes around, I guess.

Development economists like to talk about catch-up strategies, tactics that countries can take to avoid the middle income trap and cut the gap between the West and the rest. But what we need now are developed economists to explain Americas fall behind strategy. Because we are falling behind, in pretty much everything.

As the TikTok process and the earlier Huawei imbroglio show, America is no longer on the leading edge of technology in many key strategic markets. Mainland Chinese companies are globally winning in areas as diverse as 5G and social networks, and without direct government intervention to kill that innovation, American and European tech purveyors would have lost those markets entirely (and even with those interventions, they may still lose them). In Taiwan, TSMC has come from behind Intel to take a year or two lead in the fabrication of the most advanced semiconductors.

I mean, we cant even pilfer Chinese history and mythology and turn it into a decent god damn film these days.

And the fall-behind strategy continues. Immigration restrictions from an administration hell-bent on destroying the single greatest source of American innovation, coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic, have fused into the largest single drop in international student migration in American history.

Why does that matter? In the U.S. according to relatively recent data, 81% of electrical engineering grad students are international, 79% in computer science are, and in most engineering and technical fields, the number hovers above a majority.

Its great to believe the fantasy that if only these international grad students would stay home, then real Americans would somehow take these slots. But whats true of the strawberry pickers and food service workers is also true for EE grad students: proverbial Americans dont want these jobs. They are hard jobs, thankless jobs, and require a ridiculous tenacity that American workers and students by and large dont have. These industries have huge contingents of foreign workers precisely because no one domestic wants to take these roles.

So goes the talent, so goes the innovation. Without this wellspring of brainpower lodging itself in Americas top innovation hubs, where exactly do we think it will go? That former aspiring Stanford or MIT computer scientist with ideas in his or her brain isnt just going to sit by the window gazing at the horizon waiting for the moment when they can enter the gilded halls of the U.S. of A. Its the internet era, and they are just going to get started on their dreams wherever they are, using whatever tools and resources they have available to them.

All you have to do is look at the recent YC batches and realize that the future cohorts of great startups are going to increasingly come from outside the continental 48. Dozens of smart, brilliant entrepreneurs arent even trying to migrate, instead rightfully seeing their home markets as more open to innovation and technological progress than the vaunted superpower. The frontier is closed here, and it has moved elsewhere.

So what are we left with here in the U.S. and increasingly Europe? A narrow-minded policy of blocking external tech innovation to ensure that our sclerotic and entrenched incumbents dont have to compete with the best in the world. If that isnt a recipe for economic disaster, I dont know what is.

But hey: at least the youth will be patriotic.

Here is the original post:
Gangster capitalism and the American theft of Chinese innovation - TechCrunch

The Trump administration announced Wednesday that Boeing, Google and IBM will be among the organizations to lead efforts to research and push forward quantum computing development.

The companies will be part of the steering committee for the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C), a group thataims to identify standards, cybersecurity protocols and other needs to assist in pushing forward the quantum information science and technology industry.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the Department of Commerces National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) announced the members of the steering committee on Wednesday, with NIST, ColdQuanta, QC Ware, and Zapata Computing also selected to sit on the committee.

The QED-C was established by the National Quantum Initiative Act, signed into law by President TrumpDonald John TrumpUS reimposes UN sanctions on Iran amid increasing tensions Jeff Flake: Republicans 'should hold the same position' on SCOTUS vacancy as 2016 Trump supporters chant 'Fill that seat' at North Carolina rally MORE in 2018, with the full consortium made up of over 180 industry, academic and federal organizations.

According to OSTP, the steering committee will take the lead on helping to develop the supply chain to support quantums growth in industry, and is part of the Trump administrations recent efforts to promote quantum computing.

Through the establishment of the QED-C steering committee, the Administration has reached yet another milestone delivering on the National Quantum Initiative and strengthening American leadership in quantum information science, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios said in a statement. We look forward to the continued work of the QED-C and applaud this private-public model for advancing QIS research and innovation.

The establishment of the steering committee comes on the heels of the Trump administration announcing more than $1 billion in funding for new research institutes focused on quantum computing and artificial intelligence.

The announcement of the funds came after OSTP and the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the establishment of three quantum computing centers at three different U.S. academic institutions, which involved an investment of $75 million. The establishment of these centers was also the result of requirements of the National Quantum Initiative Act.

While the Trump administration has been focused on supporting the development of quantum computing, Capitol Hill has also taken an interest.

Bipartisan members of the Senate Commerce Committee introduced legislation in January aimed at increasing investment in AI and quantum computing. A separate bipartisan group of lawmakers in May introduced a bill that would create a Directorate of Technology at the NSFthat would be given $100 billion over five years to invest in American research and technology issues, including quantum computing.

Originally posted here:
Boeing, Google, IBM among companies to lead federal quantum development initiative | TheHill - The Hill

Paris, September 3, 2020 Atos, a global leader in digital transformation, now provides free, universal access to myQLM, its program providing researchers, students and developers with quantum programming tools. Launched in 2019 and initially reserved to Atos Quantum Learning Machine (Atos QLM) users, myQLM aims to democratize access to quantum simulation and encourage innovation in quantum computing. By allowing all researchers, students and developers worldwide to download and use myQLM, Atos moves one step further forward in its commitment to empower the quantum computing community.

Quantum computing has the potential to change the world as we know it by spurring breakthroughs in healthcare, environmental sustainability, industrial processes or finance. The current race to develop a commercially viable quantum computer has been instrumental in increasing awareness of the field worldwide but the quantum revolution requires more than just hardware. Training of students, professors, engineers and researchers needs to be boosted to pave the way for the emergence of the new programming languages, algorithms and tools all essentials in harnessing the true power of quantum computing.

Using myQLM, anyone can explore the capabilities of quantum computing, from experimenting with quantum programming to launching simulations of up to 20 qubits directly on their own computer or even larger simulations on the Atos QLM.

”The shortage of skilled experts is one of the next greatest challenges to the development of quantum technologies. By opening up the access to our quantum programming environment myQLM, we hope to help train the next generation of computer scientists and researchers and foster an active community that will shape the future of quantum computing. We invite everyone to download myQLM today and join us in this life-changing adventure”, said Agns Boudot, Senior Vice President, Head of HPC & Quantum at Atos.

myQLM comes with a complete set of tools:

Atos, a pioneer in quantum solutions

Atos’ ambitious program to anticipate the future of quantum computing the Atos Quantum’ program was launched in November 2016. As a result of this initiative, Atos was the first organization to offer a quantum noisy simulation module within its Atos QLM offer. Launched in 2017, Atos QLM is being used in numerous countries worldwide including Austria, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Senegal, UK and the United States, empowering major research programs in various sectors like industry or energy. Recently, Atos extended its portfolio of quantum solutions with Atos QLM Enhanced (Atos QLM E), a new GPU-accelerated range of Atos QLM.

Learn more about myQLM and join our community by visiting the dedicated website: https://atos.net/en/lp/myqlm

***

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 helps researchers and students to experiment with quantum algorithms by offering free, universal access to myQLM - Stockhouse

The team at Quantum Resistant Ledger (QRL), a post-Quantum value store and decentralized communication layer, notes that theres recently been what appears to be another quantum leap in the field of quantum computing.

The QRL team states:

The team at @ustc potentially achieved quantum supremacy one million times greater than the record currently held by Sycamore. Things can advance quickly and unexpectedly, and $QRL is ready for it, today.

As reported by the SCMP, China now claims that it has taken a quantum leap with a machine that may be able to process information a million times faster than Googles latest quantum computer, called Sycamore.

Physicist Pan Jianwei and his research team may have achieved quantum supremacy, however, we need more verification at this time. Jianweis team is backed by the Chinese government.

He works as a physicist at the University of Science and Technology of China, where he announced during a lecture at Westlake University, Hangzhou, (on September 5, 2020) that a newly developed machine achieved quantum supremacy one million times greater than what Googles Sycamore can process.

Sycamore has been able to complete certain calculations in approximately 200 seconds, which was demonstrated in 2019. The same calculation will take around 10,000 years to complete even if we use the worlds fastest binary model computer.

However, Jianwei has pointed out that the results are still preliminary at this point. He also mentioned that theres no 100% guarantee until further verification.

Fintech service providers and distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based application developers have been working on solutions that could be quantum-resistant, meaning that theyre creating software that could resist potential attacks from quantum computers (if and when they become available).

As covered in August 2020, major South Korean Daegu Bank and SK Telecom, the nations largest wireless carrier, are working on 5G enabled quantum cryptography technology.

Spanish financial giant BBVA continues to work on quantum computing data projects. Its also collaborating with German Fintech Rubean to trial a contactless payments solution. In July 2020, the BBVA shared the results of quantum computing tech proof of concepts for improving currency arbitrage and portfolio management.

Also in July, Standard Chartered announced a new collaboration with Universities Space Research Association on quantum computing.

Ethereum (ETH), the worlds largest blockchain-based platform for building decentralized applications, might not even have quantum resistance on its roadmap, according to the QRL team.

Quantum computers might completely shatter the current internet security systems protecting Bitcoin (BTC), digital payments, and IoT devices, according to a May 2020 report.

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Quantum Computer Developed by Chinese Physicists May Achieve Quantum Supremacy One Million Times Greater than Sycamore from Google - Crowdfund Insider

Quantum Computing (QC) has been gaining huge momentum in the last few years. Recent breakthroughs in affordable technology have seen conversations shift from the theoretical to practical use cases.

As early as 2018, IBM drew attention across the tech world with the creation of its Q System One quantum computer, while D-Wave Technologies went on to announce a QC chip with 5,000 qubits, more than doubling its own previous 2,000-qubit record.

While quantum-computing applications may still be five to ten years down the road, a recent report by McKinsey shows that the automotive and transportation sectors have been quick to capitalize on QCs potential, and have successfully showcased how effective the technology can be with several pilots.

Several OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and tier-one suppliers are actively discovering how the technology can benefit the industry by resolving existing issues related to route optimization, fuel-cell optimization, and material durability.

Just last year, Volkswagen partnered with D-Wave to demonstrate an efficient traffic-management system that optimized the travel routes of nine public-transit buses during the 2019 Web Summit in Lisbon.

Elsewhere, significant investments have already been made, with German supplier Bosch acquiring a stake in Massachusetts-based quantum start-up Zapata Computing, contributing to a US$21 million Series A investment.

BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen have announced that they are actively pursuing QC research, including quantum simulation for material sciences, aiming to improve the efficiency, safety, and durability of batteries and fuel cells.

Quantum Computing is being embraced by the automotive sector. Source: Pixabay

The potential for QC in the automotive sector could translate into billions of dollars in value as OEMs and automotive stakeholders hone in on the markets niche and develop a clear QC strategy.

As things stand, automotive will be one of the primary value pools for QC and is expected to have an impact on the automotive industry of up to US$3 billion by 2030, thanks to its potential in solving complex optimization problems that include processing vast amounts of data to accelerate learning in autonomous-vehicle-navigation algorithms.

QC will later have a positive effect on vehicle routing and route optimization, material and process research, as well as help improve the security of connected driving, and help accelerate research into electric vehicles (EV).

Supply routes involving several modes of transport could be optimized using algorithms developed through QC, while other applications will improve energy storage and generative design. QC could also help suppliers improve or refine kinetic properties of materials for lightweight structures and adhesives, as well as develop efficient cooling systems.

QC will be utilized by automakers during vehicle design to produce improvements relating to minimizing drag and improving fuel efficiency. Whats more, QC has the ability to perform advanced simulations in areas such as vehicle crash behavior and cabin soundproofing, as well as to train algorithms used in the development of autonomous-driving software. QCs potential to reduce computing times from several weeks to a few seconds means that OEMs could ensure car-to-car communications in real-time, every time.

Shared mobility players such as Lyft and Uber also have the potential to use QC to optimize vehicle routing, while improving fleet efficiency and availability. Alternatively, QC can help service providers simulate complex economic scenarios to predict how demand varies by geography.

Within the next five years, the automotive industry will continue to focus on product development and R&D.

QC isnt likely to replace existing high-performance computing (HPC), but will instead rely heavily on hybrid schemes where a conventional HPC can help refine problem-solving more efficiently. A computational problem, for example, to find the most efficient option among billions of possible combinations will initially be iterated with a quantum computer to get an approximate answer before the remainder is handled by an HPC to round off assessments in the subset of solution space.

The pathway for QC is still uncertain despite its potential. Investing in QC is a heavy commitment but will almost certainly put companies ahead of competitors further down the line once it has become more mainstream in use.

Automotive players will need to determine exactly where they fit in the value chain, while building solid partnerships and valuable intellectual property.

The next five to ten years will see players prioritizing application development and building focused capabilities, while making first pilots and prototypes operational. Ten years and beyond will see businesses take full advantage of their technological edge through QC and expand their core capabilities.

As QC continues to make breakthroughs, the automotive sector is set to drive the technology to the next level.

Read more:
How quantum computing could drive the future auto industry - TechHQ

Keeping qubits stable those quantum equivalents of classic computing bits will be key to realising the potential of quantum computing. Now scientists have found a new obstacle to this stability: natural radiation.

Natural or background radiation comes from all sorts of sources, both natural and artificial. Cosmic rays contribute to natural radiation, for example, and so do concrete buildings. It's around us all the time, and so this poses something of a problem for future quantum computers.

Through a series of experiments that altered the level of natural radiation around qubits, physicists have been able to establish that this background buzz does indeed nudge qubits off balance in a way that stops them from functioning properly.

"Our study is the first to show clearly that low-level ionising radiation in the environment degrades the performance of superconducting qubits," says physicist John Orrell, from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).

"These findings suggest that radiation shielding will be necessary to attain long-sought performance in quantum computers of this design."

Natural radiation is by no means the most significant or the only threat to qubit stability, which is technically known as coherence everything from temperature fluctuations to electromagnetic fields can break the qubit 'spell'.

But the scientists say if we're to reach a future where quantum computers are taking care of our most advanced computing needs, then this interference from natural radiation is going to have to be dealt with.

It was after experiencing problems with superconducting qubit decoherence that the team behind the new study decided to investigate the possible problem with natural radiation. They found it breaks up a key quantum binding called a Cooper pair of electrons.

"The radiation breaks apart matched pairs of electrons that typically carry electric current without resistance in a superconductor," says physicist Brent VanDevender, from PNNL. "The resistance of those unpaired electrons destroys the delicately prepared state of a qubit."

Classical computers can be disrupted by the same issues that affect qubits, but quantum states are much more delicate and sensitive. One of the reasons that we don't have genuine full-scale quantum computers today is that no one can keep qubits stable for more than a few milliseconds at a time.

If we can improve on that, the benefits in terms of computing power could be huge: whereas classical computing bits can only be set as 1 or 0, qubits can be set as 1, 0 or both at the same time (known as superposition).

Scientists have been able to get it happening, but only for a very short space of time and in a very tightly controlled environment. The good news is that researchers like those at PNNL are committed to the challenge of figuring out how to make quantum computers a reality and now we know a bit more about what we're up against.

"Practical quantum computing with these devices will not be possible unless we address the radiation issue," says VanDevender. "Without mitigation, radiation will limit the coherence time of superconducting qubits to a few milliseconds, which is insufficient for practical quantum computing."

The research has been published in Nature.

View post:
We Just Found Another Obstacle For Quantum Computers to Overcome - And It's Everywhere - ScienceAlert

Amazon (AMZN)

What was the last thing you heard about Amazon (AMZN)?

Let me guess. Its battle with Walmart WMT ? Or was it the FAAs approval of Amazons delivery drones? Most of this news about Amazons store is just noise that distracts investors from Amazons real force.

As Ill show, Amazon is running an operating system that powers some of todays most important technologies such as virtual reality, machine learning, and even quantum computing. Behind the scenes, it is utilized by over a million companiesincluding tech giants Apple AAPL , Netflix NFLX , and Facebook FB .

This is Amazons key and ever-growing moneymaker that has been driving Amazon stock to the moon. But before I pull the curtains, lets step back for a moment.

First, how Amazon makes moneyfor real

For all the online shopping fuss, Amazon doesn't earn much from its store. Yes, Amazon.com AMZN flips hundreds of billions of dollars worth of products every yearand its revenues are on a tear. But Amazon turns only a sliver of that into profits.

In the past year, Amazons store generated a record $282 billion in revenue from Amazon.com. That translated to just $5.6 billion in profitskeep in mind that was Amazon.coms most profitable year ever.

Meanwhile, most of Amazons profits came from the lesser-known side of its business called Amazon Web Services (AWS), as you can see below:

Amazon's profits from AWS vs Amazon.com

Its Amazons cloud arm that is serving over a million companies across the world. You may have heard that AWS has something to do with storing data in the cloud. But its much,muchmore than that.

AWS is the operating system of the internet

To get an idea of how AWS works, take your computer as an example.

Like every other computer, it runs on an operating system such as Windows or MacOS, which comes with a set of programs. This software puts your computer resources to use and helps you carry out daily taskssuch as sending emails or sorting out your files.

Now, think of AWS as an operating system thats running not one, but hundreds of thousands of big computers (in tech lingo: servers). It gives companies nearly unlimited computing power and storageas well as tools to build and run their software on the internet.

The difference is that these big computers sit in Amazons warehouses. And companies work on them remotelyor via the cloud. In other words, AWS is like the operating system of the internet.

Amazons operating system now powers AI, blockchain, and other next-gen technologies

In 2003, when Amazons AWS first started out, it offered only a couple of basic cloud services for storage and mail. Today, this system offers an unmatched set of 175+ tools that help companies build software harnesses todays top technologies.

The list includes blockchain, VR, machine learning (AI), quantum computing, augmented reality (AR), and other technologies that are the building blocks of todays internet.

For example, Netflix is using AWS for more than simply storing and streaming its shows on the internet. Its also employing AWS machine learning technology to recommend movies and shows to you.

Youve also probably heard of Slack (WORK), the most popular messaging app for business. Slack recently announced it will use Amazons media technology to introduce video and audio calls on its app.

And its not just tech companies that are utilizing Amazons AWS tools.

Take GE Power. The worlds energy leader is using AWS analytics technology to store and sift through avalanches of data from its plants. Or Fidelity. Americas mutual fund giant experiments with Amazons VR technology to build VR chat rooms for its clients.

In a picture, Amazons AWS works like this:

How Amazon's AWS powers the internet

Amazons AWS is earning more and more... and more

Amazon is not the only company running a cloud service. Google, Microsoft MSFT , Alibibaba, IBM IBM , and other tech giants are all duking it out for a slice of this lucrative business. But Amazon is the biggest and most feature-rich.

Today, Amazon controls 33% of the market, leaving its closest competitors Microsoft (2nd with 18%) and Google (3rd with 9%) far behind in the dust. That means nearly one third of the internet is running on Amazons AWS.

And it doesnt appear that Amazon will step down from its cloud throne anytime soon. Amazons sales from AWS soared 10X in the past six years. And last year, Amazon reported a bigger sales gain from AWS (dollar-wise) than any other cloud company.

Heres the main takeaway for investors

If you are looking into Amazon stock, dont get caught up in the online shopping fuss.

For years, AWS has been the linchpin of Amazons business. And this invisible side of Amazon is where Amazons largest gears turn.

Problem is, AWS is like a black box. Amazon reports very little on its operations. So if you want to dig deeper, youll have to do your own research.

Youll also have to weigh a couple of risks before putting your money into Amazon stock:

Other than that, Amazon is an outstanding stock, killing it in one of the most lucrative businesses on the planet. And its proven to be resilient to Covid, whose spread could hit the markers again.

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Continued here:
How Amazon Quietly Powers The Internet - Forbes

Paris, September 3, 2020 Atos, a global leader in digital transformation, now provides free, universal access to myQLM, its program providing researchers, students and developers with quantum programming tools. Launched in 2019 and initially reserved to Atos Quantum Learning Machine (Atos QLM) users, myQLM aims to democratize access to quantum simulation and encourage innovation in quantum computing. By allowing all researchers, students and developers worldwide to download and use myQLM, Atos moves one step further forward in its commitment to empower the quantum computing community.

Quantum computing has the potential to change the world as we know it by spurring breakthroughs in healthcare, environmental sustainability, industrial processes or finance. The current race to develop a commercially viable quantum computer has been instrumental in increasing awareness of the field worldwide but the quantum revolution requires more than just hardware. Training of students, professors, engineers and researchers needs to be boosted to pave the way for the emergence of the new programming languages, algorithms and tools all essentials in harnessing the true power of quantum computing.

Using myQLM, anyone can explore the capabilities of quantum computing, from experimenting with quantum programming to launching simulations of up to 20 qubits directly on their own computer or even larger simulations on the Atos QLM.

The shortage of skilled experts is one of the next greatest challenges to the development of quantum technologies. By opening up the access to our quantum programming environment myQLM, we hope to help train the next generation of computer scientists and researchers and foster an active community that will shape the future of quantum computing. We invite everyone to download myQLM today and join us in this life-changing adventure, said Agns Boudot, Senior Vice President, Head of HPC & Quantum at Atos.

myQLM comes with a complete set of tools:

Atos, a pioneer in quantum solutions

Atos ambitious program to anticipate the future of quantum computing the Atos Quantum program was launched in November 2016. As a result of this initiative,Atos was the first organization to offer a quantum noisy simulation module within its Atos QLM offer. Launched in 2017, Atos QLM is being used in numerous countries worldwide includingAustria, Finland, France,Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Senegal,UKand theUnited States, empowering major research programs in various sectors like industry or energy. Recently, Atos extended its portfolio of quantum solutions with Atos QLM Enhanced (Atos QLM E), a new GPU-accelerated range of Atos QLM.

Learn more about myQLM and join our community by visiting the dedicated website: https://atos.net/en/lp/myqlm

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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 helps researchers and students to experiment with quantum algorithms by offering free, universal access to myQLM - GlobeNewswire

Doing calculations with a quantum computer is a race against time, thanks to the fragility of the quantum states at their heart. And new research suggests we may soon hit a wall in how long we can hold them together thanks to interference from natural background radiation.

While quantum computing could one day enable us to carry out calculations beyond even the most powerful supercomputer imaginable, were still a long way from that point. And a big reason for that is a phenomenon known as decoherence.

The superpowers of quantum computers rely on holding the qubitsquantum bitsthat make them up in exotic quantum states like superposition and entanglement. Decoherence is the process by which interference from the environment causes them to gradually lose their quantum behavior and any information that was encoded in them.

It can be caused by heat, vibrations, magnetic fluctuations, or any host of environmental factors that are hard to control. Currently we can keep superconducting qubits (the technology favored by the fields leaders like Google and IBM) stable for up to 200 microseconds in the best devices, which is still far too short to do any truly meaningful computations.

But new research from scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), published last week in Nature, suggests we may struggle to get much further. They found that background radiation from cosmic rays and more prosaic sources like trace elements in concrete walls is enough to put a hard four-millisecond limit on the coherence time of superconducting qubits.

These decoherence mechanisms are like an onion, and weve been peeling back the layers for the past 20 years, but theres another layer that left unabated is going to limit us in a couple years, which is environmental radiation, William Oliver from MIT said in a press release. This is an exciting result, because it motivates us to think of other ways to design qubits to get around this problem.

Superconducting qubits rely on pairs of electrons flowing through a resistance-free circuit. But radiation can knock these pairs out of alignment, causing them to split apart, which is what eventually results in the qubit decohering.

To determine how significant of an impact background levels of radiation could have on qubits, the researchers first tried to work out the relationship between coherence times and radiation levels. They exposed qubits to irradiated copper whose emissions dropped over time in a predictable way, which showed them that coherence times rose as radiation levels fell up to a maximum of four milliseconds, after which background effects kicked in.

To check if this coherence time was really caused by the natural radiation, they built a giant shield out of lead brick that could block background radiation to see what happened when the qubits were isolated. The experiments clearly showed that blocking the background emissions could boost coherence times further.

At the minute, a host of other problems like material impurities and electronic disturbances cause qubits to decohere before these effects kick in, but given the rate at which the technology has been improving, we may hit this new wall in just a few years.

Without mitigation, radiation will limit the coherence time of superconducting qubits to a few milliseconds, which is insufficient for practical quantum computing, Brent VanDevender from PNNL said in a press release.

Potential solutions to the problem include building radiation shielding around quantum computers or locating them underground, where cosmic rays arent able to penetrate so easily. But if you need a few tons of lead or a large cavern in order to install a quantum computer, thats going to make it considerably harder to roll them out widely.

Its important to remember, though, that this problem has only been observed in superconducting qubits so far. In July, researchers showed they could get a spin-orbit qubit implemented in silicon to last for about 10 milliseconds, while trapped ion qubits can stay stable for as long as 10 minutes. And MITs Oliver says theres still plenty of room for building more robust superconducting qubits.

We can think about designing qubits in a way that makes them rad-hard, he said. So its definitely not game-over, its just the next layer of the onion we need to address.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

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Could Quantum Computing Progress Be Halted by Background Radiation? - Singularity Hub

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.,Sept. 3, 2020Synopsys, Inc. announced the appointment of Jeannine Sargentto its board of directors, effective today. Ms. Sargent is an experienced corporate executive and board member, with a background in global business and product strategy, engineering, operations, and sales and marketing. Prior to her current investment advisory roles with a focus on industries ranging from artificial intelligence to energy and sustainability, she served as president of Innovation and New Ventures at Flex, where she was responsible for worldwide innovation, global design and engineering, new product businesses and corporate venture investments. Before joining Flex, Ms.Sargent was CEO of Oerlikon Solar, a leading provider of end-to-end thin film solar photovoltaic solutions, and of Voyan Technology, whichsupplied software and silicon solutions for the broadband communication and semiconductor equipment industries.

Jeannine is an accomplished business leader and advisor with a compelling breadth of experience and impact, saidAart de Geus, chairman and co-CEO of Synopsys. Her demonstrated expertise in leading-edge technology and business development, operations, complex ecosystems and global markets will be of high value as a complement to the strong board we have at Synopsys.

Ms. Sargent is currently a member of the boards of Fortive, a diversified industrial technology company, and Proterra, a privately held leader in commercial electric vehicle technology. At Fortive, she is chair of the Audit committee and serves on the Compensation and Nominating & Governance committees. Ms. Sargent was also a director at Cypress Semiconductor, where she served on the Compensation and Nominating & Governance committees.

Im excited about the opportunities that Synopsys has in EDA and semiconductor IP, in light of todays hyperscalers and the dawn of quantum computing, and in the Software Integrity business, as the need for security testing continues to accelerate, Sargent said. Im honored to join such a capable and committed team.

She graduated magna cum laude fromNortheastern Universitywith a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering and holds certificates from the executive development programs at theMIT Sloan School of Management,Harvard University, andStanford University.

About Synopsys

Synopsys, Inc. is the Silicon to Softwarepartner for innovative companies developing the electronic products and software applications we rely on every day. As the worlds 15thlargest software company, Synopsys has a long history of being a global leader in electronic design automation (EDA) and semiconductor IP and is also growing its leadership in software security and quality solutions. Whether youre a system-on-chip (SoC) designer creating advanced semiconductors, or a software developer writing applications that require the highest security and quality, Synopsys has the solutions needed to deliver innovative, high-quality, secure products. Learn more atwww.synopsys.com.

Source: Synopsys

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Synopsys Appoints Jeannine Sargent to Board of Directors - HPCwire

Intel is one of the US quantum technology companies included in Q-Next, one of five national quantum research centres established by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the US Department of Energy (DOE).

Q-Next, National Quantum Information Science Research Centre, is led by Argonne National Laboratory and brings together researchers from national laboratories, universities and technology companies.

Advancing quantum practicality will be a team sport across the ecosystem, and our partnership with Argonne National Laboratory on Q-Next will enable us to bring our unique areas of expertise to this cross-industry effort to drive meaningful progress in the field, says James Clarke, director of quantum hardware at Intel.

At Intel, we are taking a broad view of quantum research that spans hardware and software with a singular focus on getting quantum out of labs and into the real world, where it can solve real problems.

Quantum computing has the potential to tackle problems beyond the capabilities of conventional systems today by leveraging a phenomenon of quantum physics that exponentially expands computational power.

This could dramatically speed complex problem-solving in a variety of fields such as pharmaceuticals, telecommunications and materials science, accelerating what today could take years to complete in only a matter of minutes.

To speed the discovery and development in this promising emerging field of computing, the DOE and the OSTP have created five new quantum information science research centers across the country, with Q-Next being one of them.

The Q-Next facility will create two national foundries for quantum materials and devices, and leverage the strength of private-public partnership to focus on the advancements of three core quantum technologies:

* Quantum networks: Development of communications networks and interconnects for the transmission of quantum information across long distances, including quantum repeaters that enable the establishment of unhackable networks for information transfer.

* Quantum-enabled sensing: Development of sensor technologies that can leverage the exponential power of quantum computing to achieve unprecedented sensitivities for data capture, which would have transformational applications in physics, materials and life sciences.

* Quantum test beds: Ongoing research utilising quantum test environments, including both quantum simulators and future full-stack universal quantum computers, with applications in quantum simulations, cryptanalysis and logistics optimisation.

We are excited to have Intels expertise and partnership, along with numerous technology leaders, as part of the new Q-Next centre. Intel will help us to drive discoveries and technical progress in quantum computing that will advance both known and yet-to-be discovered quantum-enabled applications, says David Awschalom, Q-Next director, senior scientist at Argonne, Liew Family professor of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago and director of the Chicago Quantum Exchange.

Intels research efforts in quantum span the entire quantum system or full-stack from qubit devices to the hardware and software required to control these devices, to quantum algorithms that will harness the power of quantum technologies.

All of these elements are essential to advancing quantum practicality, the point at which quantum computing moves out of research labs and into real-world practical applications.

The company aims to develop a large-scale quantum computing system, which will require thousands of quantum bits, or qubits, working reliably together with limited error and information loss. It is focused on overcoming the key bottlenecks preventing researchers from moving beyond todays few qubit systems, including qubit operation at slightly higher temperatures, and elegant control systems and interconnects to facilitate the design of quantum systems at scale.

Earlier this year, Intel demonstrated progress in hot qubit performance, leveraging its silicon spin qubit research, and continues to advance its research on customised cryogenic control chips for quantum systems like Horse Ridge.

Featured picture: The inside of a quantum computing refrigerator in Intels Quantum Computing Lab in Hillsboro, Oregon. (Credit: Walden Kirsch/Intel Corporation)

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Intel ups the ante on quantum computing research - IT-Online