Honeywell International announced Thursday that it has created the worlds most powerful quantum computer. And some of the things quantum computers can do are truly strange.

With a quantum volume of 64 the Honeywell quantum computer is twice as powerful as the next alternative in the industry, reads a blog post on the companys website.

A 64-volume quantum computer sounds amazing. But what is it? It means software-industrial conglomerate Honeywell (ticker: HON) has tethered together six high-functioning q-bits, or quantum bits.

OK, amazing. But who should care? The short answer is everyone.

Its tough to find an area of human activity where [quantum computing] wont help, Christopher Savoie, CEO of Zapata Computing, tells Barrons.

Quantum computing is still in its infancy, and the science is daunting, to say the least, but Savoie has a useful analogy. The Wright brothers took their flight in 1903, and by 1918 we had global air forces, he says. Honeywell is months past the Wright brothers in terms of quantum computing development, according to Savoie.

Quantum computers are, essentially, way more powerful computers. Problems which would might take days, weeks, or years to solve on a traditional computer can take minutes on a quantum computer.

Climate change, drug discovery, logistics, notes Savoie, right now you are limited by the number of variable your computer can handle. Quantum-computing speed grows exponentially. There is a hockey-stick graphic look in computing power as new q-bits get added to the system.

Honeywell stock doesnt trade on quantum fundamentals yet. Shares are down about 16% year to date, worse than the comparable drops of the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average. Honeywell is a large aerospace supplier, and the commercial aviation business has been hammered by Covid-19. Boeing (BA) stock, for instance, is off more than 40% year to date.

Honeywell stock is flat in early Friday trading. The S&P is up about 0.8%.

The quantum-computing industry hasnt yet arrived, despite todays announcement. But quantum computers are already better than regular computers in certain instances. Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL) demonstrated the ability of its rudimentary quantum computer to beat traditional systems.

Our quantum computing starts with having a MEMS layer that acts to trap individual ytterbium atoms. We take atoms and hit them with a laser, which strips an electron and traps an ion in an electric field, Tony Uttley, president of Honeywell Quantum Solutions, told Barrons a few months ago, when the company embarked on its quest to make the most powerful computer. The ion is the q-bit. The cool thing about quantum mechanics is a q-bit can be a one or a zero at the same time.

The explanation of the quantum-computing hardware is nearly incomprehensible to most people. And the analogy between the quantum world and the regular world breaks down eventually. Its totally different tech. Quantum computers arent faster just because of the dual nature of a q-bit. They are also faster because of quantum entanglement and constructive interference.

Readers might have to Google both terms, but Uttley tried to help Barrons understand. With constructive interference, only the correct answer survives, he says. The system filters out the wrong answers.

Ask a question and receive only the correct answer. Quantum computers are always right? That situation feels almost religious, like querying God.

What constructive interference really means is the quantum computer solves a maze like a human does, says Savoie. Looking from overhead and tossing out obvious wrong paths before it even starts. That helps a little, but all the explanations help to drive home the idea that quantum-computing technology is a game-changer.

For Honeywell, its a business opportunity. It can create the hardware and join with business such as Zapata to build quantum software and data-analytic platforms.

Zapata is, essentially, an enterprise software company. Businesses arent likely to hire their own quantum programmers, but now they have someone to call to help with the toughest analytical problems.

It would be hard for each company to build their own quantum-computing department, though some banks are doing that already. Quantum programmers? reflects Uttley. The people who know how to program are called theorists, they are a combination of physicists and mathematician, and there are hundreds in the world, not thousands.

Thats one reason why between Honeywell and its partners, which include Microsoft (MSFT), are building a QaaS, or Quantum as a Service, business model.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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This Is What the Worlds Most Powerful Quantum Computer Looks Like - Barron's

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A quantum computing startup called Quantum Machines has released a new programming language called QUA. The language runs on the startups proprietary Quantum Orchestration Platform.

Quantum Machines says its goal is to complete the stack that includes quantum computing at the very bottom-most level. Yes, those physical interactions between quantum bits (qubits) are what set quantum computers apart from traditional hardwarebut you still need the rest of the hardware that will turn physical interactions into something that will run software.

And, of course, you need the software, too. Thats where QUA comes in.

The transition from having just specific circuitsphysical circuits for specific algorithmsto the stage at which the system is programmable is the dramatic point, CEO Itavar Siman told Tech Crunch. Basically, you have a software abstraction layer and then, you get to the era of software and everything accelerated.

The language Quantum Machine describes in its materials isnt what you think of when you imagine programming, unless youre a machine language coder. Whats machine language? Thats the lowest possible level of code, where the instructions arent in natural or human language and are instead in tiny bits of direct instruction for the hardware itself.

Coder Ben Eater made a great video that walks you through a sample program written in C, which is a higher and more abstract language, and how that information translates all the way down into machine code. (Essentially, everything gets much messier and much less readable to the human eye.)

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Machine code acts as a reminder that, on a fundamental level, everything inside your computer is passing nano-Morse code back and forth to do everything you see on the screen as well as all the behind the scenes routines and coordination. Since quantum computers have a brand new paradigm for the idea of hardware itself, theres an opening for a new machine code.

Quantum Machines seems to want to build the entire quantum system, from hardware to all the software to control and highlight it. And if that sounds overly proprietary or like some unfair version of how to develop new technology, we have some bad news for you about the home PC wars of the 1980s or the market share Microsoft Windows still holds among operating systems.

By offering a package deal with something for everyone when quantum computing isnt even a twinkle in the eye of the average consumer, Quantum Machines could be making inroads that will keep it ahead for decades. A universal language, indeed.

QUA is what we believe the first candidate to become what we define as the quantum computing software abstraction layer, Sivan told TechCrunch. In 20 years, we might look back on QUA the way todays users view DOS.

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This Is the First Universal Language for Quantum Computers - Popular Mechanics

Honeywell says its new quantum computer is twice as fast than any other machine.

In the race to the future of quantum computing, Honeywell has just secured a fresh lead.

The North Carolina-based conglomerate announced Thursday that it has produced the worlds fastest quantum computer, at least twice as powerful as the existing computers operated by IBM and Google.

The machine, located in a 1,500-square-foot high-security storage facility in Boulder, Colorado, consists of a stainless steel chamber about the size of basketball that is cooled by liquid helium at a temperature just above absolute zero, the point at which atoms stop vibrating. Within that chamber, individual atoms floating above a computer chip are targeted with lasers to perform calculations.

While people have studied the potential of quantum computing for decades, that is, building machines with the ability to complete calculations beyond the limits of classic computers and supercomputers, the sector has until recently been limited to the intrigue of research groups at tech companies such as IBM and Google.

But in the past year, the race between those companies to claim supremacy and provide a commercial use in the quantum race has become heated. Honeywells machine has achieved a Quantum Volume of 64, a metric devised by IBM that measures the capability of the machine and error rates, but is also difficult to decipher (and as quantum computing expert Scott Aaronson wrote in March, is potentially possible to game). By comparison, IBM announced in January that it had achieved a Quantum Volume of 32 with its newest machine, Raleigh.

Google has also spent significant resources on developing its quantum capabilities and In October said it had developed a machine that completed a calculation that would have taken a supercomputer 10,000 years to process in just 200 seconds. (IBM disputed Googles claim, saying the calculation would have taken only 2.5 days to complete.)

Honeywell has been working toward this goal for the past decade when it began developing the technology to produce cryogenics and laser tools. In the past five years, the company assembled a team of more than 100 technologists entirely dedicated to building the machine, and in March, Honeywell announced it would be within three months a goal it was able to meet even as the Covid-19 turned its workforce upside down and forced some employees to work remotely. We had to completely redesign how we work in the facilities, had to limit who was coming on the site, and put in place physical barriers, says Tony Uttley, president of Honeywell Quantum Solutions. All of that happened at the same time we were planning on being on this race.

The advancement also means that Honeywell is opening its computer to companies looking to execute their own unimaginably large calculations a service that can cost about $10,000 an hour, says Uttley. While it wont disclose how many customers it has, Honeywell did say that it has a contract with JPMorgan Chase, which has its own quantum experts who will use its machine to execute gargantuan tasks, such as building fraud detection models. For those companies without in-house quantum experts, queries can be made through intermediary quantum firms, Zapata Computing and Cambridge Quantum Computing.

With greater access to the technology, Uttley says, quantum computers are nearing the point where they have graduated from an item of fascination to being used to solve problems like climate change and pharmaceutical development. Going forward, Uttley says Honeywell plans to increase the Quantum Volume of its machine by a factor of 10 every year for the next five years, reaching a figure of 640,000 a capability far beyond that imagined ever before.

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Honeywell Says It Has Built The Worlds Most Powerful Quantum Computer - Forbes

Looking at quantum computing-fueled applications of the future, we much of the time look to the innovations capability to take care of computationally-intensive mathematical problems, which could lead to breakthroughs in drug discovery, logistics, cryptography, and finance.

A research paper by Bernhard Dieber and different scholastics entitled Quantum Computation in Robotic Science and Applications, researches how quantum computing could augment numerous operations where robots are confronted with intensive computational assignments, where commonly broadly useful GPUs have been utilized to deal with intensive tasks.

While we may not see the appearance of quantum-fueled robots in the coming decade, the paper refers to how the rise of cloud-based quantum computing services and even quantum co-processors (QPUs) could work coupled with traditional CPUs to propel the improvement of much increasingly powerful and smart robots.

Australian physicists state they have adapted methods from autonomous vehicles and robotics to effectively evaluate the performance of quantum gadgets. A University of Sydney team reports that its new methodology has been indicated tentatively to outflank simplistic characterisation of these situations by a factor of three, with a lot higher outcome for increasingly complex simulated environments. Lead creator Riddhi Gupta says one of the hindrances to creating quantum computing systems to useful scale is beating the blemishes of hardware.

Qubits the fundamental units of quantum technology are exceptionally delicate to disturbances from their environments, for example, electromagnetic noise and show performance varieties that lessen their usefulness.

To address this, Gupta and associates took strategies from old style estimation utilized in robotics and adapted them to improve hardware performance. This is accomplished through the proficient automation of procedures that map both environment of and performance variations across huge quantum gadgets.

Conventional AI, as opposed to current machine learning applications, depends on formal knowledge representations like rules, realities and algorithms so as to improve the robot behavior or copy intelligent behavior.

Artificial intelligence applications are as often as possible utilized in robotics technology, similar to path planning, the derivation of goal-oriented action plans, system diagnosis, the coordination of different specialists, or thinking and reasoning of new knowledge. A significant number of these applications use varieties of ignorant (visually impaired) or informed (heuristic) search algorithms, which depend on crossing trees or diagrams, where every node represents a potential state in the search space, associated with further follow-up states.

Quantum computing can fill in as an option for pretty much every search algorithm utilized in robotics and AI applications and decrease unpredictability. For graph search, for instance, there is a quantum alternative based on quantum random walks.

In robotics, Gupta says, machines depend on simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) algorithms. Gadgets like automated vacuum cleaners are ceaselessly mapping their surroundings and then evaluating their area within that environment so as to move. The trouble with adjusting SLAM algorithms to quantum frameworks is that if you measure, or characterise, the performance of a solitary qubit, you obliterate its quantum data.

Gupta has built up a versatile algorithm that measures the performance of one qubit and utilities that data to assess the capacities of nearby qubits. We have called this Noise Mapping for Quantum Architectures., she says. Instead of gauging the old-style environment for every single qubit, we can automate the procedure, lessening the number of estimations and qubits required, which accelerates the entire procedure.

Efforts have been made as of late to illuminate old-style automated tasks utilizing AI as another option. In the quantum domain, quantum neural networks could help take care of issues related with kinematics, or the mechanical movement of robots.

There are reports that state how the two degrees of control in robotics, abstract task-planning, and specific movement-planning which are presently illuminated independently, can be explained in an increasingly integrative way with quantum computing.

Quantum computing could play an important job in enhancing the development of machines, including identifying moments of inertia and joint friction. Such difficulties could be addressed with quantum reinforcement learning, with models that can develop themselves, and with hybrid quantum-classical algorithms.

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The Inter-dependence of Quantum Computing and Robotics - Analytics Insight

EMERGING TECH

Lockheed Martin Ventures -- the defense companys technology startup investment arm -- has backed two companies through separate avenues announced this week.

In a release Tuesday, quantum computing company IonQ said it grew its total fundraising amount to $84 million through a new Series B round that represents its second significant round of investments since the 2015 founding with $2 million in seed money.

The latest round included Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH and Cambium, another investment firm that focuses on companies pushing future computational paradigm changes.

For Lockheed Martin Ventures, this investment gains the company an early look at a technology of increasing interest to government agencies. Two years ago, the parent corporation doubled the size of the venture fund to $200 million and sharpened the focus on five core technology areas.

College Park, Maryland-based IonQ uses what it calls a trapped-ion method for its quantum computing platforms.

IonQ raised another $20 million in 2016 from Amazon Web Services, Googles venture arm and New Enterprise Associates to build two new quantum computers. Then in 2019 came an additional $55 million in a fundraising round that saw Samsung and Mubadala Capital enter the fray along with additional backing from AWS, GV and NEA.

Separately on Wednesday, training technology firm Red 6 announced it too has received an investment from Lockheed Martin Ventures.

Terms of the funding were undisclosed but Santa Monica, California-based Red 6 will use those funds to support the further development and commercialization of its Airborne Tactical Augmented Reality System offering used to help train airplane pilots.

ATARS more specifically is designed to support synthetic training environments that seek to evaluate human performance in a multi-echelon, mixed-reality environment.

Red 6 was founded in November 2017 and conducted a feasibility demonstration with the Air Force in February 2019, the same month that a $2.5 million seed funding round closed.

The company connected with the Air Force through AFWERX, a program designed to connect startups with the service branch. Red 6 is the first AFWERX-backed company to be awarded a Small Business Innovation Research Phase III contract.

Some of Red 6s previous investors include Moonshots Capital, Starburst Accelerator and Irongate Capital Partners.

About the Author

Ross Wilkers is a senior staff writer for Washington Technology. He can be reached at rwilkers@washingtontechnology.com. Follow him on Twitter: @rosswilkers. Also find and connect with him on LinkedIn.

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Lockheed's ventures arm backs quantum computing and training tech firms - Washington Technology

Everyone learns differently, but cognitive research shows that you tend to remember things better if you use spaced repetition. That is, you learn something, then after a period, you are tested. If you still remember, you get tested again later with a longer interval between tests. If you get it wrong, you get tested earlier. Thats the idea behind [Andy Matuschak s]and [Michael Nielsens] quantum computing tutorial. You answer questions embedded in the text. You answer to yourself, so theres no scoring. However, once you click to reveal the answer, you report if you got the answer correct or not, and the system schedules you for retest based on your report.

Does it work? We dont know, but we have heard that spaced repetition is good for learning languages, among other things. We suspect that like most learning methods, it works better for some people than others.

The series of essays are reasonably technical and assume you understand linear algebra, complex numbers, and Boolean logic. Of course, there are links to help you pick up any of those you lack. Honestly, those topics will help you in lots of other areas, too, so if you dont already have those in your tool belt, it wouldnt hurt to follow some of the links.

If you want to play with quantum computing, we like Quirk. There are also quantum computers you can use for real from IBM, although youll run out of gates pretty quickly.

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2 thoughts on Learn Quantum Computing With Spaced Repetition - Hackaday