This is the first in a series of explainers on quantum technology. The other two are on quantum communication and post-quantum cryptography.

A quantum computer harnesses some of the almost-mystical phenomena of quantum mechanics to deliver huge leaps forward in processing power. Quantum machines promise to outstrip even the most capable of todaysand tomorrowssupercomputers.

They wont wipe out conventional computers, though. Using a classical machine will still be the easiest and most economical solution for tackling most problems. But quantum computers promise to power exciting advances in various fields, from materials science to pharmaceuticals research. Companies are already experimenting with them to develop things like lighter and more powerful batteries for electric cars, and to help create novel drugs.

The secret to a quantum computers power lies in its ability to generate and manipulate quantum bits, or qubits.

Today's computers use bitsa stream of electrical or optical pulses representing1s or0s. Everything from your tweets and e-mails to your iTunes songs and YouTube videos are essentially long strings of these binary digits.

Quantum computers, on the other hand, usequbits, whichare typically subatomic particles such as electrons or photons. Generating and managing qubits is a scientific and engineering challenge. Some companies, such as IBM, Google, and Rigetti Computing, use superconducting circuits cooled to temperatures colder than deep space. Others, like IonQ, trap individual atoms in electromagnetic fields on a silicon chip in ultra-high-vacuum chambers. In both cases, the goal is to isolate the qubits in a controlled quantum state.

Qubits have some quirky quantum properties that mean a connected group of them can provide way more processing power than the same number of binary bits. One of those properties is known as superposition and another is called entanglement.

Qubits can represent numerous possible combinations of 1and 0 at the same time. This ability to simultaneously be in multiple states is called superposition. To put qubits into superposition, researchers manipulate them using precision lasers or microwave beams.

Thanks to this counterintuitive phenomenon, a quantum computer with several qubits in superposition can crunch through a vast number of potential outcomes simultaneously. The final result of a calculation emerges only once the qubits are measured, which immediately causes their quantum state to collapse to either 1or 0.

Researchers can generate pairs of qubits that are entangled, which means the two members of a pair exist in a single quantum state. Changing the state of one of the qubits will instantaneously change the state of the other one in a predictable way. This happens even if they are separated by very long distances.

Nobody really knows quite how or why entanglement works. It even baffled Einstein, who famously described it as spooky action at a distance. But its key to the power of quantum computers. In a conventional computer, doubling the number of bits doubles its processing power. But thanks to entanglement, adding extra qubits to a quantum machine produces an exponential increase in its number-crunching ability.

Quantum computers harness entangled qubits in a kind of quantum daisy chain to work their magic. The machines ability to speed up calculations using specially designed quantum algorithms is why theres so much buzz about their potential.

Thats the good news. The bad news is that quantum machines are way more error-prone than classical computers because of decoherence.

The interaction of qubits with their environment in ways that cause their quantum behavior to decay and ultimately disappear is called decoherence. Their quantum state is extremely fragile. The slightest vibration or change in temperaturedisturbances known as noise in quantum-speakcan cause them to tumble out of superposition before their job has been properly done. Thats why researchers do their best to protect qubits from the outside world in those supercooled fridges and vacuum chambers.

But despite their efforts, noise still causes lots of errors to creep into calculations. Smart quantum algorithmscan compensate for some of these, and adding more qubits also helps. However, it will likely take thousands of standard qubits to create a single, highly reliable one, known as a logical qubit. This will sap a lot of a quantum computers computational capacity.

And theres the rub: so far, researchers havent been able to generate more than 128 standard qubits (see our qubit counter here). So were still many years away from getting quantum computers that will be broadly useful.

That hasnt dented pioneers hopes of being the first to demonstrate quantum supremacy.

Its the point at which a quantum computer can complete a mathematical calculation that is demonstrably beyond the reach of even the most powerful supercomputer.

Its still unclear exactly how many qubits will be needed to achieve this because researchers keep finding new algorithms to boost the performance of classical machines, and supercomputing hardware keeps getting better. But researchers and companies are working hard to claim the title, running testsagainst some of the worlds most powerful supercomputers.

Theres plenty of debate in the research world about just how significant achieving this milestone will be. Rather than wait for supremacy to be declared, companies are already starting to experiment with quantum computers made by companies like IBM, Rigetti, and D-Wave, a Canadian firm. Chinese firms like Alibaba are also offering access to quantum machines. Some businesses are buying quantum computers, while others are using ones made available through cloud computing services.

One of the most promising applications of quantum computers is for simulating the behavior of matterdown to the molecular level. Auto manufacturers like Volkswagen and Daimler are using quantum computers to simulate the chemical composition of electrical-vehicle batteries to help find new ways to improve their performance. And pharmaceutical companies are leveraging them to analyze and compare compounds that could lead to the creation of new drugs.

The machines are also great for optimization problems because they can crunch through vast numbers of potential solutions extremely fast. Airbus, for instance, is using them to help calculate the most fuel-efficient ascent and descent paths for aircraft. And Volkswagen has unveiled a service that calculates the optimal routes for buses and taxis in cities in order to minimize congestion. Some researchers also think the machines could be used to accelerate artificial intelligence.

It could take quite a few years for quantum computers to achieve their full potential. Universities and businesses working on them are facing a shortage of skilled researchersin the fieldand a lack of suppliersof some key components. But if these exotic new computing machines live up to their promise, they could transform entire industries and turbocharge global innovation.

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Explainer: What is a quantum computer? | MIT Technology Review

In late October 2019, Google CEO Sundar Pichai likened the latest result from the companys quantum computing hardware lab in Santa Barbara, California, to the Wright brothers first flight.

One of the labs prototype processors had achieved quantum supremacyevocative jargon for the moment a quantum computer harnesses quantum mechanics to do something seemingly impossible for a conventional computer. In a blog post, Pichai said the milestone affirmed his belief that quantum computers might one day tackle problems like climate change, and the CEO also name-checked John Martinis, who had established Googles quantum hardware group in 2014.

Heres what Pichai didnt mention: Soon after the team had first got its quantum supremacy experiment working a few months earlier, Martinis says, he had been reassigned from a leadership position to an advisory one. Martinis tells WIRED that the change led to disagreements with Hartmut Neven, the longtime leader of Googles quantum project.

Martinis resigned from Google early this month. Since my professional goal is for someone to build a quantum computer, I think my resignation is the best course of action for everyone, he adds.

A Google spokesman did not dispute this account, and says that the company is grateful for Martinis contributions and that Neven continues to head the companys quantum project. Parent company Alphabet has a second, smaller, quantum computing group at its X Labs research unit. Martinis retains his position as a professor at the UC Santa Barbara, which he held throughout his tenure at Google, and says he will continue to work on quantum computing.

Googles quantum computing project was founded by Neven, who pioneered Googles image search technology, in 2006, and initially focused on software. To start, the small group accessed quantum hardware from Canadian startup D-Wave Systems, including in collaboration with NASA.

Everything you ever wanted to know about qubits, superpositioning, and spooky action at a distance.

The project took on greater scale and ambition when Martinis joined in 2014 to establish Googles quantum hardware lab in Santa Barbara, bringing along several members of his university research group. His nearby lab at UC Santa Barbara had produced some of the most prominent work in the field over the past 20 years, helping to demonstrate the potential of using superconducting circuits to build qubits, the building blocks of quantum computers.

Qubits are analogous to the bits of a conventional computer, but in addition to representing 1s and 0s, they can use quantum mechanical effects to attain a third state, dubbed a superposition, something like a combination of both. Qubits in superposition can work through some very complex problems, such as modeling the interactions of atoms and molecules, much more efficiently than conventional computer hardware.

How useful that is depends on the number and reliability of qubits in your quantum computing processor. So far the best demonstrations have used only tens of qubits, a far cry from the hundreds or thousands of high quality qubits experts believe will be needed to do useful work in chemistry or other fields. Googles supremacy experiment used 53 qubits working together. They took minutes to crunch through a carefully chosen math problem the company calculated would take a supercomputer on the order of 10,000 years, but does not have a practical application.

Martinis leaves Google as the company and rivals that are working on quantum computing face crucial questions about the technologys path. Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft, as well as Google offer their prototype technology to companies such as Daimler and JP Morgan so they can run experiments. But those processors are not large enough to work on practical problems, and it is not clear how quickly they can be scaled up.

When WIRED visited Googles quantum hardware lab in Santa Barbara last fall, Martinis responded optimistically when asked if his hardware team could see a path to making the technology practical. I feel we know how to scale up to hundreds and maybe thousands of qubits, he said at the time. Google will now have to do it without him.

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Google's Head of Quantum Computing Hardware Resigns - WIRED

Boffins claim to have found path to 'real-world applications' by running hot

Dr Henry Yang and Professor Andrew Dzurak: hot qubits are a game-changer for quantum computing development. Pic credit: Paul Henderson-Kelly

Scientists in Australia are claiming to have made a breakthrough in the field of quantum computing which could ease the technology's progress to affordability and mass production.

A paper by researchers led by Professor Andrew Dzurak at Sydney's University of New South Wales published in Nature today says they have demonstrated quantum computing at temperatures 15 times warmer than previously thought possible.

Temperature is important to quantum computing because quantum bits (qubits) the equivalent classical computing bits running the computer displaying this story can exist in superconducting circuits or form within semiconductors only at very low temperatures.

Most quantum computers being developed by the likes of IBM and Google form qubits at temperatures within 0.1 degrees above absolute zero or -273.15C (-459.67F). These solid-state platforms require cooling to extremely low temperatures because vibrations generated by heat disrupt the qubits, which can impede performance. Getting this cold requires expensive dilution refrigerators.

Artistic representation of quantum entanglement. Pic credit: Luca Petit for QuTech

But Dzurak's team has shown that they can maintain stable "hotbits" at temperatures up to 15 times higher than existing technologies. That is a sweltering 1.5 Kelvin (-271.65C). It might not seem like much, but it could make a big difference when it comes to scaling quantum computers and getting them one step closer to practical applications.

"For most solid-state qubit technologies for example, those using superconducting circuits or semiconductor spins scaling poses a considerable challenge because every additional qubit increases the heat generated, whereas the cooling power of dilution refrigerators is severely limited at their operating temperature. As temperatures rise above 1 Kelvin, the cost drops substantially and the efficiency improves. In addition, using silicon-based platforms is attractive, as this can assist integration into classical systems that use existing silicon-based hardware," the paper says.

Keeping temperature at around 1.5 Kelvin can be achieved using a few thousand dollars' worth of refrigeration, rather than the millions of dollars needed to cool chips to 0.1 Kelvin, Dzurak said.

"Our new results open a path from experimental devices to affordable quantum computers for real-world business and government applications," he added.

The researchers used "isotopically enriched silicon" but the proof of concept published today promises cheaper and more robust quantum computing which can be built on hardware using conventional silicon chip foundries, they said.

Nature published another independent study by Dr Menno Veldhorst and colleagues at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands which details a quantum circuit that operates at 1.1 Kelvin, confirming the breakthrough.

If made more practical and cheaper, quantum computers could represent a leap forward in information science. Whereas the bit in classical computing either represents a one or a zero, qubits superimpose one and zero, representing both states at the same time. This creates an exponential improvement in performances such that so eight qubits theoretically have two to eight times the performance of eight bits. For example, Google and NASA have demonstrated that a quantum computer with 1,097 qubits outperformed existing supercomputers by more than 3,600 times and personal computers by 100 million.

While the experimental nature and cost of quantum computing means it is unlikely to make it into any business setup soon, anything to make the approach more practical could make a big difference to scientific computational challenges such as protein folding. The problem of how to predict the structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence is important for understanding how proteins function in a wide range of biological processes and could potentially help design better medicines.

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Law360 (April 21, 2020, 5:23 PM EDT) -- Once considered a scientific impossibility, quantum computing is now expected to have a far-reaching commercial impact thanks to an increase in investment and a myriad of new discoveries by physicists and computer scientists. Quantum computers have the potential to transform industries from auto manufacturing to pharmaceuticals to finance, but the technology has only recently moved from the laboratory to the commercial market.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, IBM Corp. announced it had struck partnerships with Daimler AG (the parent company of Mercedes-Benz) and Delta Air Lines Inc. to harness quantum computing to solve real-world issues for...

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What To Expect In The Emerging Age Of Quantum Computing - Law360

This partnership is an opportunity to leverage a unique industrial and technological expertise for the design, integration and validation of advanced quantum solutions that has been applied for more than a decade to quantum gravimeters and atomic clocks. It will speed up the development of Pasqals processors and will bring them to an unprecedented maturity level.

Muquans will supply several key technological building blocks and a technical assistance to Pasqal, that will offer an advanced computing and simulation capability towards quantum advantage for real life applications.

We have the strong belief that the neutral atoms technology developed by Pasqal has a unique potential and this agreement is a wonderful opportunity for Muquans to participate on the great adventure of quantum computing. It will also help us find new opportunities for our technologies. We expect this activity to significantly grow in the coming years and this partnership will allow us to become a key stakeholder in the supply chain of quantum computers., Bruno Desruelle, CEO Muquans

Muquans laser solutions combine extreme performance, advanced functionalities and industrial reliability. When you develop the next generation of quantum computers, you need to rely on strong bases and build trust with your partners. Being able to embed this technology in our processors will be a key factor for our company to consolidate our competitive advantage and bring quantum processors to the market., Georges-Olivier Reymond, CEO Pasqal

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Muquans and Pasqal partner to advance quantum computing - Quantaneo, the Quantum Computing Source

By Theodora Lau and Bradley Leimer, with some interesting musings on Quantum computing and blockchain

Everything that happens is connected to everything else.

There are then, moments in time, that act as trigger points for a series of interconnected events that result in significant human progress, whether through a new technology or a period of transformative societal change. This rejects both the conventional linear and teleological views of history those focusing on the procession toward the result rather than threaded causation of historical progression and looks for sparks of connected ingenuity that further develops the thrust of human advancement.

And so begins the heralded documentary series Connections created by science historian James Burke. Throughout the series, Burke demonstrates why we cannot view the development of any portion of our contemporary world in isolation. He asserts that advances in the modern world are the result of a series of interconnected events and moments of progress, whether that be an invention of necessity or a curious progression of culture from the seemingly disjointed motivations of humans, all of whom had no concept or perhaps little intention of the final result of their activities.

Human progress flies blind until everything becomes very transparent. This interaction of these isolated events drives our history, our innovation, our progress.

Evolution feels slow until a sudden series of tremors makes it all feel far too real.

This is how we often feel in our very modern world.

We are lost in the world of the dim light of glass, until we are awoken from our slumber of scrolling by something personally transformative to our lives.

The promise of technology is that it will improve our society, or at least make our lives more efficient, freeing up our time to pursue some of lifes pleasures, whether that be leisure like reading and writing and expressing ourselves through art, or toward more time working to solve lifes more pressing problems through the output of our work.

Certain technology especially recent improvements in computing, from faster processors, cloud storage, and advanced quantum computing combine with others to create opportunities to alleviate significant challenges like climate change, water scarcity, and global poverty. Others, like blockchain (distributed ledger technology), hold the promise of reigning in the issue around defining the source of truth within certain forms of data, some of which are life defining.

The creation of trust through technology is an interesting thread to pull. From the source of goods and services traveling through our supply chain to the authenticity of our elections, new technologies hold the potential to rapidly improve the future and the advancement of humanity. Closer to our focus on financial services, quantum computing addresses market risk, credit risk, digital annealing, dynamic portfolio selection, ATM replenishment and more. Blockchain technology has focused on AML/KYC, trade finance, remittance, central bank backed digital currency, security tokens, and has the capacity for continued innovation in the financial space.

What if these two elemental forces were viewed together? What if we channeled our inner James Burke, and looked for connections between these two transformative technologies? This is exactly what our partner Arunkumar Krishnakumar did in his new book Quantum Computing and Blockchain in Business: Exploring the applications, challenges and collision of quantum computing and blockchain. Though a seemingly impenetrable title, we can more than assure you its worth a read to understand where the future is headed.

Aruns book dissects the genesis of these twin technologies and how they intersect. Similar to how James Burke rejects the threading of historical events, the first time author writes about the impacts of these technologies on healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, governance, elections, smart cities, the environment, chemistry, logistics, and much more. We are left with the question of whether there is anything that a blockchain powered by quantum computing cannot do? Fortunately the book answers that as well.

As the book discusses in the last few chapters as viewed through Aruns critical lens there are also darker sides to these technologies where they could threaten nation states, launch a new cyber arms race he details the dangers of these technologies and how they might impact every life. He also concludes with some blue sky ideas both dreams and realized aspirations derived from the power of these complementary tools of knowledge and how writing this book provided him with a sense of hope for the future of humanity, in the age of rapidly developing and highly interdependent technologies.

Perhaps it is fitting then, that Arun uses a quote from the opening of the Charles Dickens novel, A Tale of Two Cities, to tell his story. The conflict between good and evil, between light and darkness, can be won. Technology is just another means to this end.

There is a lot of hype, but somewhere amid all the hype, there is still hope.

How we write the next chapter and the future of the human race is entirely up to us.

The sky is indeed blue.

We must never lose hope.

Listen in via iTunes and Spotify as Theo and Bradley of Unconventional Ventures have a conversation with our partner and co-host Arunkumar Krishnakumar, as he talks about his new book Quantum Computing and Blockchain in Business: Exploring the applications, challenges and collision of quantum computing and blockchain, and how he is finding solace in this summer of COVID-19. Listen to this, and every episode of One Vision, on your favorite player.

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Drop us a line if you want to be featured, guest post, suggest a possible interview, or just let us know what you would like to see more of in our future articles. Were always open to new and interesting suggestions for informative and different articles. Contact us, by email, twitter or whatever social media works for you and hopefully we can share your story too and reach our global audience.

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Steve Reinhardt, vice president of product development, will discuss the company's Mukai middleware while demonstrating its QCI NetworkX for solving graph problems

Quantum Computing Inc (), an advanced technology company developing quantum-ready applications and tools, will host a webinar to discuss its technical strategy and Mukai middleware while demonstrating its QCI NetworkX for solving graph problems.

The webinar, scheduled for 12 pm ET on April 28, will be hosted by Steve Reinhardt, vice president of product development.

Quantum Computings Mukai middleware, announced in January, is quantum-ready application-development middleware, developed to help users and application developers solve extremely complex discrete optimization problems, which are at the heart of some of the most difficult computing challenges in industry, government, and academia.

The Mukai software stack enables developers to create and execute quantum-ready applications on classical computers, often with superior performance, while being ready to run on quantum computers when those systems can achieve performance advantages.

The Leesburg, Virginia-based company said it has already demonstrated superior performance for some applications built on Mukai and running on classical computers.

Discrete combinatorial optimization is one high-value class of problems expected to benefit greatly from quantum computers, and techniques for exploiting quantum computers for optimization have been deeply explored, evidenced by the work on quantum annealers by early D-Wave researchers and on gate-model QCs by researchers of the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA).

The company's Mukai software stack is centered on the quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) formulation well known to quantum annealing users.

The Mukai software product includes two primary user/developer interfaces the QCI NetworkX graph-analysis package and the QCI qbsolv QUBO solver. Modeled on the D-Wave NetworkX package targeting quantum annealing, QCI NetworkX implements a set of extremely compute-intense (NP-hard to mathematicians) graph kernels that are expected to benefit the most from QCs; the kernels use the QUBO formulation.

Quantum Computing said the April 28 webinar will conclude after a question and answer session. Questions regarding QCIs strategy, Mukai, and QCI NetworkX can be sent in advance to [emailprotected]

To attend the webinar, free registration will be required. To register for and attend the webinar, use this URL:https://zoom.us/s/98851767288.

Contact the author: [emailprotected]

Follow him on Twitter @PatrickMGraham

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Quantum Computing will host April 28 webinar on its technical strategy - Proactive Investors USA & Canada

AWS, Microsoft and other IaaS providers have jumped on the quantum computing bandwagon as they try to get ahead of the curve on this emerging technology.

Developers use quantum computing to encode problems as qubits, which compute multiple combinations of variables at once rather than exploring each possibility discretely. In theory, this could allow researchers to quickly solve problems involving different combinations of variables, such as breaking encryption keys, testing the properties of different chemical compounds or simulating different business models. Researchers have begun to demonstrate real-world examples of how these early quantum computers could be put to use.

However, this technology is still being developed, so experts caution that it could take more than a decade for quantum computing to deliver practical value. In the meantime, there are a few cloud services, such as Amazon Bracket and Microsoft Quantum, that aim to get developers up to speed on writing quantum applications.

Quantum computing in the cloud has the potential to disrupt industries in a similar way as other emerging technologies, such as AI and machine learning. But quantum computing is still being established in university classrooms and career paths, said Bob Sutor, vice president of IBM Quantum Ecosystem Development. Similarly, major cloud providers are focusing primarily on education at this early stage.

"The cloud services today are aimed at preparing the industry for the soon-to-arrive day when quantum computers will begin being useful," said Itamar Sivan, co-founder and CEO of Quantum Machines, an orchestration platform for quantum computing.

There's still much to iron out regarding quantum computing and the cloud, but the two technologies appear to be a logical fit, for now.

Cloud-based quantum computing is more difficult to pull off than AI, so the ramp up will be slower and the learning curve steeper, said Martin Reynolds, distinguished vice president of research at Gartner. For starters, quantum computers require highly specialized room conditions that are dramatically different from how cloud providers build and operate their existing data centers.

Reynolds believes practical quantum computers are at least a decade away. The biggest drawback lies in aligning the quantum state of qubits in the computer with a given problem, especially since quantumcomputersstill haven't been proven to solve problems better than traditional computers.

Coders also must learn new math and logic skills to utilize quantum computing. This makes it hard for them since they can't apply traditional digital programming techniques. IT teams need to develop specialized skills to understand how to apply quantum computing in the cloud so they can fine tune the algorithms, as well as the hardware, to make this technology work.

Current limitations aside, the cloud is an ideal way to consume quantum computing, because quantum computing has low I/O but deep computation, Reynolds said. Because cloud vendors have the technological resources and a large pool of users, they will inevitably be some of the first quantum-as-a-service providers and will look for ways to provide the best software development and deployment stacks.

Quantum computing could even supplement general compute and AI services cloud providers currently offer, said Tony Uttley, president of Honeywell Quantum Solutions.In that scenario, the cloud would integrate with classical computing cloud resources in a co-processing environment.

The cloud plays two key roles in quantum computing today, according to Hyoun Park, CEO and principal analyst at Amalgam Insights. The first is to provide an application development and test environment for developers to simulate the use of quantum computers through standard computing resources.

The second is to offer access to the few quantum computers that are currently available, in the way mainframe leasing was common a generation ago. This improves the financial viability of quantum computing, since multiple users can increase machine utilization.

It takes significant computing power to simulate quantum algorithm behavior from a development and testing perspective. For the most part, cloud vendors want to provide an environment to develop quantum algorithms before loading these quantum applications onto dedicated hardware from other providers, which can be quite expensive.

However, classical simulations of quantum algorithms that use large numbers of qubits are not practical. "The issue is that the size of the classical computer needed will grow exponentially with the number of qubits in the machine," said Doug Finke, publisher of the Quantum Computing Report.So, a classical simulation of a 50-qubit quantum computer would require a classical computer with roughly 1 petabyte of memory. This requirement will double with every additional qubit.

Nobody knows which approach is best, or which materials are best. We're at the Edison light bulb filament stage. Martin ReynoldsDistinguished vice president of research at Gartner

But classical simulations for problems using a smaller number of qubits are useful both as a tool to teach quantum algorithms to students and also for quantum software engineers to test and debug algorithms with "toy models" for their problem, Finke said.Once they debug their software, they should be able to scale it up to solve larger problems on a real quantum computer.

In terms of putting quantum computing to use, organizations can currently use it to support last-mile optimization, encryption and other computationally challenging issues, Park said. This technology could also aid teams across logistics, cybersecurity, predictive equipment maintenance, weather predictions and more. Researchers can explore multiple combinations of variables in these kinds of problems simultaneously, whereas a traditional computer needs to compute each combination separately.

However, there are some drawbacks to quantum computing in the cloud. Developers should proceed cautiously when experimenting with applications that involve sensitive data, said Finke. To address this, many organizations prefer to install quantum hardware in their own facilities despite the operational hassles, Finke said.

Also, a machine may not be immediately available when a quantum developer wants to submit a job through quantum services on the public cloud. "The machines will have job queues and sometimes there may be several jobs ahead of you when you want to run your own job," Finke said. Some of the vendors have implemented a reservation capability so a user can book a quantum computer for a set time period to eliminate this problem.

IBM was first to market with its Quantum Experience offering, which launched in 2016 and now has over 15 quantum computers connected to the cloud. Over 210,000 registered users have executed more than 70 billion circuits through the IBM Cloud and published over 200 papers based on the system, according to IBM.

IBM also started the Qiskit open source quantum software development platform and has been building an open community around it. According to GitHub statistics, it is currently the leading quantum development environment.

In late 2019, AWS and Microsoft introduced quantum cloud services offered through partners.

Microsoft Quantum provides a quantum algorithm development environment, and from there users can transfer quantum algorithms to Honeywell, IonQ or Quantum Circuits Inc. hardware. Microsoft's Q# scripting offers a familiar Visual Studio experience for quantum problems, said Michael Morris, CEO of Topcoder, an on-demand digital talent platform.

Currently, this transfer involves the cloud providers installing a high-speed communication link from their data center to the quantum computer facilities, Finke said. This approach has many advantages from a logistics standpoint, because it makes things like maintenance, spare parts, calibration and physical infrastructure a lot easier.

Amazon Braket similarly provides a quantum development environment and, when generally available, will provide time-based pricing to access D-Wave, IonQ and Rigetti hardware. Amazon says it will add more hardware partners as well. Braket offers a variety of different hardware architecture options through a common high-level programming interface, so users can test out the machines from the various partners and determine which one would work best with their application, Finke said.

Google has done considerable core research on quantum computing in the cloud and is expected to launch a cloud computing service later this year. Google has been more focused on developing its in-house quantum computing capabilities and hardware rather than providing access to these tools to its cloud users, Park said. In the meantime, developers can test out quantum algorithms locally using Google's Circ programming environment for writing apps in Python.

In addition to the larger offerings from the major cloud providers, there are several alternative approaches to implementing quantum computers that are being provided through the cloud.

D-Wave is the furthest along, with a quantum annealer well-suited for many optimization problems. Other alternatives include QuTech, which is working on a cloud offering of its small quantum machine utilizing its spin qubits technology. Xanadu is another and is developing a quantum machine based on a photonic technology.

Researchers are pursuing a variety of approaches to quantum computing -- using electrons, ions or photons -- and it's not yet clear which approaches will pan out for practical applications first.

"Nobody knows which approach is best, or which materials are best. We're at the Edison light bulb filament stage, where Edison reportedly tested thousands of ways to make a carbon filament until he got to one that lasted 1,500 hours," Reynolds said. In the meantime, recent cloud offerings promise to enable developers to start experimenting with these different approaches to get a taste of what's to come.

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The future of quantum computing in the cloud - TechTarget