Category Archives: Quantum Computing

HOUSTON, April 27, 2021 Hewlett Packard Enterprisetoday announced it has been awarded $40M SGD to build a new supercomputer for the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore, the national high-performance computing (HPC) resource center dedicated to supporting science and engineering computing needs for academic, research and industry communities. The new system, which will be 8X faster compared to NSCCs existing pool of HPC resources, will expand and augment ongoing research efforts by enabling tools such as artificial intelligence (AI) and deep machine learning to optimize modeling, simulation and even software simulation for quantum computing. NSCC will use the system to unlock scientific discoveries across medicine, diseases, climate, engineering and more.

The new supercomputer was funded through a SGD200 million investment that was announced by the Singapore government in March 2019 to boost Singapores high-performance computing resources.

Fueling a new supercomputing journey at the National Supercomputing Centre Singapore

The NSCCs new supercomputer will be built and powered using theHPE Cray EX supercomputer, which is an HPC system designed to support next-generation supercomputing, such as Exascale-class systems, that also features a full stack of purpose-built technologies across compute, software, storage and networking to harness insights from vast, complex data more quickly and efficiently. The advanced performance will help tackle compute and data-intensive modeling and simulation needs requiring higher speed and targeted HPC and artificial intelligence capabilities.

The new system will be housed in a new data center designed to increase sustainability and reduce energy consumption. To further support NSCCs mission for a greener data center, the new system will leverage liquid-cooling capabilities made possible through the HPE Cray EX supercomputer to increase energy efficiency and power density by transferring heat generated by the new supercomputer with a liquid-cooled process.

The combination of these advanced technologies will enable the NSCCs existing community of researchers and scientists further their R&D efforts to make breakthroughs in a range of areas, some of which include:

We are inspired by how Singapores community of scientists have leveraged high performance computing to improve ongoing research efforts. We are honored to continue empowering their mission by building them a powerful system using the HPE Cray EX supercomputer that delivers comprehensive, purposely-engineered technologies for demanding research, said Bill Mannel, vice president and general manager, HPE. The new system will deliver a significant boost to R&D, allowing Singapores community of scientists and engineers to make greater contributions that will unlock innovation, economic value, and overall, strengthen the nations position in becoming more digitally-driven.

Supercomputers have enabled the scientific community in Singapore to make significant strides in their research, said Associate Professor Tan Tin Wee, Chief Executive at the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore. The new system will provide the necessary resources to meet the growing supercomputing needs of our researchers, and to enable more of such significant scientific breakthroughs at the national and global level.

The NSCCs supercomputer unlocks new level of scientific discovery with advanced technologies

The HPE Cray EX supercomputer powering NSCCs new supercomputer is a purpose-built system designed specifically to deliver petaflop to exaflop performance with the worlds most energy-efficient footprint. It also includes the HPE Cray EX software stack for software-defined capabilities that allow the NSCCs users to gain the high-performance of a supercomputer, but through the operational experience of a cloud. Additionally, HPE will integrate the following next-generation technologies with the HPE Cray EX supercomputer:

The new system will be operational in early 2022. To learn more about NSCC and Singapores national HPC resources, please visitwww.nscc.sg

About Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) is the global edge-to-cloud platform as-a-service company that helps organizations accelerate outcomes by unlocking value from all of their data, everywhere. Built on decades of reimagining the future and innovating to advance the way people live and work, HPE delivers unique, open and intelligent technology solutions, with a consistent experience across all clouds and edges, to help customers develop new business models, engage in new ways, and increase operational performance. For more information, visit:www.hpe.com.

Source: HPE

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Selected to Build New Supercomputer for the National Supercomputing Centre Singapore - HPCwire

Six Stanford University researchers are among the 120 newly elected members of the National Academy of Sciences. Scientists are elected to the NAS by their peers.

The six Stanford faculty members newly elected to the National Academy of Sciences. (Image credit: Andrew Brodhead)

The new members from Stanford are Savas Dimopoulos, the Hamamoto Family Professor and professor of physics in the School of Humanities and Sciences; Daniel Freedman, a visiting professor at theStanford Institute for Theoretical Physics (SITP) and professor of applied mathematics and theoretical physics, emeritus, at MIT; Judith Frydman, professor of biology and the Donald Kennedy Chair in the School of Humanities and Sciences, and professor of genetics in the Stanford School of Medicine; Kathryn A. Kam Moler, vice provost and dean of research, and the Marvin Chodorow Professor and professor of applied physics and of physics in the School of Humanities and Sciences; Tirin Moore, professor of neurobiology in the Stanford School of Medicine; and John Rickford, professor of linguistics and the J.E. Wallace Sterling Professor in the Humanities, emeritus, in the School of Humanities and Sciences.

Savas Dimopoulos collaborates on a number of experiments that use the dramatic advances in atom interferometry to do fundamental physics. These include testing Einsteins theory of general relativity to fifteen decimal precision, atom neutrality to thirty decimals, and looking for modifications of quantum mechanics. He is also designing an atom-interferometric gravity-wave detector that will allow us to look at the universe with gravity waves instead of light.

Daniel Freedmans research is in quantum field theory, quantum gravity and string theory with an emphasis on the role of supersymmetry. Freedman, along with physicists Sergio Ferrara and Peter van Nieuwenhuizen, developed the theory of supergravity. A combination of the principles of supersymmetry and general relatively, supergravity is a deeply influential blueprint for unifying all of natures fundamental interactions.

Judith Frydman uses a multidisciplinary approach to address fundamental questions about protein folding and degradation, and molecular chaperones, which help facilitate protein folding. In addition, this work aims to define how impairment of cellular folding and quality control are linked to disease, including cancer and neurodegenerative diseases, and examine whether reengineering chaperone networks can provide therapeutic strategies.

Kam Molers research involves developing new tools to measure magnetic properties of quantum materials and devices on micron length-scales. These tools can then be used to investigate fundamental materials physics, superconducting devices and exotic Josephson effects a phenomenon in superconductors that shows promise for quantum computing.

Tirin Moore studies the activity of single neurons and populations of neurons in areas of the brain that relate to visual and motor functions. His lab explores the consequences of changes in that activity and aims to develop innovative approaches to fundamental problems in systems and circuit-level neuroscience.

John Rickfords research and teaching are focused on sociolinguistics the relation between linguistic variation and change and social structure. He is especially interested in the relation between language and ethnicity, social class and style, language variation and change, pidgin and creole languages, African American Vernacular English, and the applications of linguistics to educational problems.

The academy is a private, nonprofit institution that was created in 1863 to advise the nation on issues related to science and technology. Scholars are elected in recognition of their outstanding contributions to research. This years election brings the total of active academy members to 2,461.

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Six faculty elected to National Academy of Sciences - Stanford Today - Stanford University News

An international research team has proven that the imaginary part of quantum mechanics can be observed in action in the real world.

For almost a century, physicists have been intrigued by the fundamental question: why are complex numbers so important in quantum mechanics, that is, numbers containing a component with the imaginary number i? Usually, it was assumed that they are only a mathematical trick to facilitate the description of phenomena, and only results expressed in real numbers have a physical meaning. However, a Polish-Chinese-Canadian team of researchers has proved that the imaginary part of quantum mechanics can be observed in action in the real world.

We need to significantly reconstruct our naive ideas about the ability of numbers to describe the physical world. Until now, it seemed that only real numbers were related to measurable physical quantities. However, research conducted by the team of Dr. Alexander Streltsov from the Centre for Quantum Optical Technologies (QOT) at the University of Warsaw with the participation of scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei and the University of Calgary, found quantum states of entangled photons that cannot be distinguished without resorting to complex numbers. Moreover, the researchers also conducted an experiment confirming the importance of complex numbers for quantum mechanics. Articles describing the theory and measurements have just appeared in the journals Physical Review Letters and Physical Review A.

Photons can be so entangled that within quantum mechanics their states cannot be described without using complex numbers. Credit: QOT/jch

In physics, complex numbers were considered to be purely mathematical in nature. It is true that although they play a basic role in quantum mechanics equations, they were treated simply as a tool, something to facilitate calculations for physicists. Now, we have theoretically and experimentally proved that there are quantum states that can only be distinguished when the calculations are performed with the indispensable participation of complex numbers, explains Dr. Streltsov.

Complex numbers are made up of two components, real and imaginary. They have the form a + bi, where the numbers a and b are real. The bi component is responsible for the specific features of complex numbers. The key role here is played by the imaginary number i, i.e. the square root of -1.

There is nothing in the physical world that can be directly related to the number i. If there are 2 or 3 apples on a table, this is natural. When we take one apple away, we can speak of a physical deficiency and describe it with the negative integer -1. We can cut the apple into two or three sections, obtaining the physical equivalents of the rational numbers 1/2 or 1/3. If the table is a perfect square, its diagonal will be the (irrational) square root of 2 multiplied by the length of the side. At the same time, with the best will in the world, it is still impossible to put i apples on the table.

The photon source used to produce quantum states requiring description by complex numbers. Credit: USTC

The surprising career of complex numbers in physics is related to the fact that they can be used to describe all sorts of oscillations much more conveniently than with the use of popular trigonometric functions. Calculations are therefore carried out using complex numbers, and then at the end only the real numbers in them are taken into account.

Compared to other physical theories, quantum mechanics is special because it has to describe objects that can behave like particles under some conditions, and like waves in others. The basic equation of this theory, taken as a postulate, is the Schrdinger equation. It describes changes in time of a certain function, called the wave function, which is related to the probability distribution of finding a system in a specific state. However, the imaginary number i openly appears next to the wave function in the Schrdinger equation.

For decades, there has been a debate as to whether one can create coherent and complete quantum mechanics with real numbers alone. So, we decided to find quantum states that could be distinguished from each other only by using complex numbers. The decisive moment was the experiment where we created these states and physically checked whether they were distinguishable or not, says Dr. Streltsov, whose research was funded by the Foundation for Polish Science.

The experiment verifying the role of complex numbers in quantum mechanics can be presented in the form of a game played by Alice and Bob with the participation of a master conducting the game. Using a device with lasers and crystals, the game master binds two photons into one of two quantum states, absolutely requiring the use of complex numbers to distinguish between them. Then, one photon is sent to Alice and the other to Bob. Each of them measures their photon and then communicates with the other to establish any existing correlations.

Lets assume Alice and Bobs measurement results can only take on the values of 0 or 1. Alice sees a nonsensical sequence of 0s and 1s, as does Bob. However, if they communicate, they can establish links between the relevant measurements. If the game master sends them a correlated state, when one sees a result of 0, so will the other. If they receive an anti-correlated state, when Alice measures 0, Bob will have 1. By mutual agreement, Alice and Bob could distinguish our states, but only if their quantum nature was fundamentally complex, says Dr. Streltsov.

An approach known as quantum resource theory was used for the theoretical description. The experiment itself with local discrimination between entangled two-photon states was carried out in the laboratory at Hefei using linear optics techniques. The quantum states prepared by the researchers turned out to be distinguishable, which proves that complex numbers are an integral, indelible part of quantum mechanics.

The achievement of the Polish-Chinese-Canadian team of researchers is of fundamental importance, but it is so profound that it may translate into new quantum technologies. In particular, research into the role of complex numbers in quantum mechanics can help to better understand the sources of the efficiency of quantum computers, qualitatively new computing machines capable of solving some problems at speeds unattainable by classical computers.

References:

Operational Resource Theory of Imaginarity by Kang-Da Wu, Tulja Varun Kondra, Swapan Rana, Carlo Maria Scandolo, Guo-Yong Xiang, Chuan-Feng Li, Guang-Can Guo and Alexander Streltsov, 1 March 2021, Physical Review Letters.DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.090401

Resource theory of imaginarity: Quantification and state conversion by Kang-Da Wu, Tulja Varun Kondra, Swapan Rana, Carlo Maria Scandolo, Guo-Yong Xiang, Chuan-Feng Li, Guang-Can Guo and Alexander Streltsov, 1 March 2021, Physical Review A.DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.103.032401

The Centre for Quantum Optical Technologies at the University of Warsaw (UW) is a unit of the International Research Agendas program implemented by the Foundation for Polish Science from the funds of the Intelligent Development Operational Programme. The seat of the unit is the Centre of New Technologies at the University of Warsaw. The unit conducts research on the use of quantum phenomena such as quantum superposition or entanglement in optical technologies. These phenomena have potential applications in communications, where they can ensure the security of data transmission, in imaging, where they help to improve resolution, and in metrology to increase the accuracy of measurements. The Centre for Quantum Optical Technologies at the University of Warsaw is actively looking for opportunities to cooperate with external entities in order to use the research results in practice.

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Physicists Prove That the Imaginary Part of Quantum Mechanics Really Exists! - SciTechDaily

Quantum computing may conjure up the image of crazy-haired physicists working away in remote and isolated locations, but nothing could now be further from the truth.

The U.S. government authorized a $1 billion quantum computing plan late last year to get ahead of its adversaries. A few weeks ago, President Bidens infrastructure proposal included a further $180 billion investment in R&D for quantum computing, semiconductor chips, and other key technologies.

Related: 4 Experts Let The Cat Out Of The Box On Quantum Computing And Electronic Design

The governments bigger plan is to link government, private and university research to accelerate quantum computing technologies in the U.S. This plan is similar to the earlier US technology successes like the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, the Apollo program to send humans to the moon, and others.

This gallery highlights major components in the governments quantum computing structure, starting with the National Quantum Initiative.

Related: 5 Key Segments Shape 2021 Semiconductor and EDA Markets

John Blyler is a Design News senior editor, covering the electronics and advanced manufacturing spaces. With a BS in Engineering Physics and an MS in Electrical Engineering, he has years of hardware-software-network systems experience as an editor and engineer within the advanced manufacturing, IoT and semiconductor industries. John has co-authored books related to system engineering and electronics for IEEE, Wiley, and Elsevier.

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Will the Government Succeed in Building a Quantum Computing Center? - DesignNews

GCHQ Director, Jeremy Fleming, said on Friday 23 April that the UK needs to prioritize advances in quantum computing if the country wants to prosper and remain secure.

Hes right. The vast amounts of data protected by RSA encryption is under threat of theft and forgery should quantum computing live up to promise.

While such peril remains years away at least, companies and governments worldwide are getting to grips with quantum computing, as the technology leaves the realm of physics laboratories and into the inboxes of presidents and prime ministers.

Classical computers, such as those in our phones, laptops, and even the worlds most powerful supercomputers, conduct computations with ones and zeros binary digits, or bits.

When presented with sufficiently complex problems, classical computers begin to struggle.

Consider this number:

25195908475657893494027183240048398571429282126204032027777137836043662020707595556264018525880784406918290641249515082189298559149176184502808489120072844992687392807287776735971418347270261896375014971824691165077613379859095700097330459748808428401797429100642458691817195118746121515172654632282216869987549182422433637259085141865462043576798423387184774447920739934236584823824281198163815010674810451660377306056201619676256133844143603833904414952634432190114657544454178424020924616515723350778707749817125772467962926386356373289912154831438167899885040445364023527381951378636564391212010397122822120720357

If we were to ask a classical, general-purpose computer which two prime numbers multiply together make this 617-digit number? it would have to essentially guess at each possible combination. Using this method, most estimates suggest it would take around 300 trillion years to crack much longer than the age of the universe. There are ways to speed this up, but this form of encryption is extremely difficult to crack classically.

This is vital for protecting important data and is the kind of problem that underpins RSA encryption which is used to protect vast amounts of data on the internet.

A quantum computer, on the other hand, could figure out the answer in seconds.

While researchers agree that you would need around a few thousand qubits to conduct such a calculation (were only around the 100-qubit mark right now), it is not beyond the realms of possibility for such a feat to be achieved this decade.

With vast use cases, ranging from artificial intelligence (AI) to weather forecasting, quantum computings potential encryption-cracking capabilities should put the technology firmly on the priority list for world leaders and security chiefs.

In the Vincent Briscoe Lecture, Fleming made frequent mention of quantum computing.

He highlighted that a small percentage of technologies must be truly sovereign to retain the UKs strategic technical advantage, and quantum computing is no doubt a core part of this. The elements of cryptographic technology that are a part of these technologies was no doubt an allusion to quantum computing. The country, or corporation, that possess the first full-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer will be the biggest threat to cryptography the world has ever seen.

Fleming will undoubtably be aware of Chinas quantum supremacy announcement in December 2020, in which a team at the University of Science and Technology of China performed a calculation with a photonic quantum computer 100 trillion times the speed of classical supercomputers.

While photonic devices are so far unprogrammable, in that each can only perform one specific calculation, the progress in China is a wake-up call for Western powers to get to grips with the technology.

The UK is among the leaders in the West, in both spending and academic prowess, but Chinas $15bn of investments into quantum technologies dwarfs the rest of the pack President Biden will no doubt be keeping a close eye on developments in this nascent industry.

Quantum computing is no doubt going to develop significantly as a theme over the coming years, as recent developments indicate. Governments and corporations alike must now take steps to engage, or risk falling behind.

Integer factorization is just one of the applications of quantum computing, in what is becoming a rich ecosystem of research and development. GlobalDatas quantum computing value chain sets out the segments of this growing industry.Related Report Download the full report from GlobalData's Report StoreGet the Report

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GCHQ boss is right to be keeping his eye on quantum computing - Verdict

IonQ is the only company that provides access to its quantum computing platform via both the Amazon Braket and Microsoft Azure clouds, as well as through direct API access.

FREMONT, CA: IonQ announced full integration of its quantum computing platform with Qiskit, an open-source quantum software development kit, or SDK. Qiskit users can now submit programs directly to IonQ's platform without writing any new code. Through the Qiskit Partner Program, this new integration makes IonQ's high-connectivity high-fidelity 11 qubit system available to the 275,000+ enterprise, government, startup, partner, and university members already using Qiskit to create and run quantum programs.

As part of the announcement, IonQ has released an open-source provider library that integrates seamlessly with Qiskit, which can be found on the Qiskit Partners GitHub organization or downloaded via The Python Package Index. Qiskit users with an IonQ account will be able to run their quantum programs on IonQ's cloud quantum computing platform with little to no modificationsimply change the code to point to the IonQ backend and run as usual.

"IonQ is excited to make our quantum computers and APIs easily accessible to the Qiskit community," said IonQ CEO & President Peter Chapman. "Open source has already revolutionized traditional software development. With this integration, we're bringing the world one step closer to the first generation of widely-applicable quantum applications."

This integration builds on IonQ's ongoing success. IonQ recently entered into a merger agreement with dMY Technology Group, Inc. III to go public at an expected valuation of approximately $2 billion. IonQ also recently released a product roadmap setting out its plans to develop modular quantum computers small enough to be networked together in 2023, which could pave the way for broad quantum advantage by 2025. Last year, the company unveiled a new $5.5 million, 23,000 square foot Quantum Data Center in Maryland's Discovery District and announced the development of the world's most powerful quantum computer, featuring 32 perfect atomic qubits with low gate errors and an expected quantum volume greater than 4,000,000.

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IonQ Announces Full Integration of its Quantum Computing Platform with Qiskit - CIO Applications

When it comes to practical problems, including things such as the traveling salesman problem, a classic in optimization, the value of quantum is still to be decided, say Richard Moulds, left, head of Amazon's Braket quantum computing service, and Robert Liscouski, head of Quantum Computing Inc., which makes Qatalyst software to do optimization on both classical and quantum machines.

It's easy to imagine a problem for which, if one had a computer that magically leapt across steps of the computation, your life would be much better.

Say, for example, a computer that auto-magically searches through a vast space of possible solutions much faster than you can with a CPU or GPU.

That's the premise of quantum computing, and surprisingly, for all the hype, it's not clear if that premise is true.

"I don't think we've seen any evidence yet that a quantum machine can do anything that's commercially interesting faster or cheaper than a classical machine," Richard Moulds, head of Amazon Braket, the cloud giant's quantum computing service, said in an interview with ZDNet. "The industry is waiting for that to arrive."

It is the question of the "quantum advantage," the notion that the entangled quantum states in a quantum computer will perform better on a given workload than an electronic system.

"We haven't seen it yet," Robert Liscouski, CEO of Quantum Computing Inc, said of the quantum advantage, in the same Zoom interview with Moulds.

That aporia, the as-yet-unproven quantum advantage, is in fact the premise for a partnership announced this month, whereby QCI's Qatalyst software program will run as a cloud service on top of Braket.

QCI's corporate tag line is "ready-to-run quantum software," and the Qatalyst program is meant to dramatically simplify sending a computing task to the qubits of a quantum hardware machine, the quantum processing units, or QPUs, multiple instances of which are offered through Bracket, including D::Wave, IonQ, and Rigetti.

The idea is to get more people working with quantum machines precisely to find out what they might be good for.

"Our platform basically allows the democratization of quantum computing to extend to the user community," said Liscouski.

"If you look back on the quantum industry since it started, it's traditionally been very difficult to get access to quantum hardware," said Moulds, including some machines that are "totally unavailable unless you have a personal relationship with the the physicist that built it."

"We're trying to make it easy for everyone to have access to the same machinery; it shouldn't be those that have and those that have not, it should be everyone on the same flywheel," he said.

The spectrum of users who will be working with quantum comprise "two important communities" today, said Moulds, those that want to twiddle qubits at the hardware level, and those that want to spend time on particular problems in order to see if they actually gain any benefit when exposed to the quantum hardware.

"There's a lot of researchers focused on building better hardware, that is the defining force in this industry," said Moulds. "Those types of researchers need to be in the weeds, playing at the qubit level, tweaking the frequencies of the pulses sent to the chip inside the fridge."

On the other hand, "the other class of users is much more geared to Robert's view of the world: they don't really care how it gets done, they just want to understand how to program their problem so that it can be most easily solved."

That second class of users are "all about abstraction, all about getting away from the technology." As quantum evolves, "maybe it slides under so that customers don't even know it's there," mused Moulds.

When it comes to those practical problems, the value of quantum is still to be decided.

There has been academic work showing quantum can speed up tasks, but "that's not been applied to a problem that anybody cares about," said Moulds.

The entire quantum industry is "still finding its way to what applications are really useful," he said. "You tend to see this list of potential applications, a heralded era of quantum computing, but I don't think we really know," he said.

The Qatalyst software from QCI focuses on the kinds of problems that are of perennial interest, generally in the category of optimization, particularly constrained optimization, where a solution to a given loss function or objective function is made more complicated by having to narrow the solution to a bunch of variables that have a constraint of some sort enforced, such as bounded values.

"They are described at a high level as the traveling salesman problem, where you have multi-variate sort of outcomes," said Liscouski. "But it's supply-chain logistics, it's inventory management, it's scheduling, it's things that businesses do today that quantum can really accelerate the outcomes in the very near future."

Such problems are "a very important use case," said Moulds. Quantum computers are "potentially good at narrowing the field in problem spaces, searching through large potential combinations in a wide variety of optimization problems," he said.

However, "classical will probably give you the better result" at this time, said Liscouski.

One of the reasons quantum advantage is not yet certain is because the deep phenomena at the heart of the discipline, things such as entanglement, make the field much more complex than early digital computing.

"A lot of people draw the analogy between where we are and the emergence of the transistor," said Moulds.

"I think that's not true: this is not just a case of making the computers we have today smaller and faster and cheaper, we're not anywhere near that regime, that Moore's Law notion of just scaling these things up."

"There's fundamental scientific discoveries that have to be made to build machines that can tackle these sorts of problems on the grand scale that we've been talking about."

Beyond the machines' evolution, there is an evolution implicit for programmers. Quantum brings a fundamentally different approach to programming. "These are physics-based machines, they're not just computational engines that add ones and zeros together, it's not just a faster slide rule," said Moulds.

That different way of programming may, in fact, point the way to some near-term payoff for the Qatalyst software, and Braket. Both Liscouski and Moulds expressed enthusiasm for taking lessons learned from quantum and back-loading them into classical computers.

"Typically, access to quantum computing is through toolkits and resources that require some pretty sophisticated capabilities to program to ultimately get to some result that involves a quantum computer," observed Liscouski.

"With Braket, the platform provides both access to QPUs and classical computing at the same time, and the quantum techniques that we use in the platform will get results for both," said Liscouski.

"It isn't necessarily a black and white decision between quantum and classical," said Moulds. "There's an emerging area, particularly in the area of optimization, people use the term quantum-inspired approaches are used."

"What that means is, looking at the ways that quantum computers actually work and applying that as a new class of algorithms that run on classical machines," he said.

"So, there's a sort of a morphing going on," he said.

An advantage to working with QCI, said Moulds, is that "they bring domain expertise that we don't have," things such as the optimization expertise.

"We've coined the phrase, 'Build on Braket'," said Moulds. "We're trying to build a quantum platform, and we look to companies like QCI to bring domain expertise to use that platform and apply it to problems that customers have really got."

Also important is operational stability and reliability, said Moulds. For a first-tier Web service with tons of users, the priority for Amazon is "running a professional service, a platform that is reliable and secure and durable" on which companies can "build businesses and solve problems."

Although there are "experimental" aspects, he said, "this is not intended to be a best-effort showcase."

Although the quantum advantage is not certain, Moulds holds out the possibility someone working with the technology will find it, perhaps even someone working on Braket.

"The only way we can move this industry forward is by pulling the curtains apart and giving folks the chance to actually see what's real," he said.

"And, boy, the day we see a quantum computer doing something that is materially advantageous from a commercial point of view, you will not miss that moment, I guarantee."

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Quantum: It's still not clear what its good for, but Amazon and QCI will help developers find out - ZDNet

Dr. Lee Braine has spent the past seven years working across Barclays' wealth management, markets, and corporate and investment banking divisions but his job couldn't be further from that of your typical City of London broker or trader.

A managing director in the bank's chief technology office, London-based Braine is responsible for research and engineering across corporate, investment, and retail banking. He has a special focus on distributed ledger technology, like blockchain, as well as quantum computing.

Insider sat down for a virtual chat with Braine who was named one of Business Insider's 100 Transformers to discuss what he's working on and where the industry is going next.

Transcript has been edited for clarity and length:

Insider: You're not an average banker. You're a computer scientist by training. Can you tell me a bit more about your background?

Braine: I have a PhD from University College London in computer sciencethe particular topic was object-oriented functional programming. I used that research knowledge in banking, and that included, for example, working with financial market infrastructures when I was in my twenties to produce new architectures and new optimization algorithms. In this case, it was for securities settlement. After that, I spent quite a few years working in technology management.

Within Barclays, for these last 7 years, I've been working on technology innovation. The typical thing I've been working on is responsibility for advanced technologies that Barclays needs to be up to speed on. We work closely with a variety of stakeholders, not just [technology] vendors, but also very closely with official institutions, including central banks, regulators, and the government on the potential of these new technologies, and the risks and any issues that may lie with them.

Insider: Let's talk about distributed ledgersyou lead Barclays' efforts there. Why is Barclays interested in distributed ledgers like the blockchain?

Braine: Interest was initially sparked about 5-6 years ago when we were looking at bitcoin from a technology perspective. That means not as an investable asset, but at other interesting, novel technologies underlying bitcoin that could be repurposed in more traditional financial services. There are several features of bitcoin that inspire a different way of working: at the lowest level, there may be things such as consensus algorithms, hashing technique, the chain of blocksall of those types of low-level technical things that everybody learned about in the last few years from blockchain. But higher up, there are new ways of working, almost new market models that get inspired by cryptocurrency.

For example, currently, financial market infrastructures are centralized financial institutions, and their technology is centralizedthey've got centralized databases and centralized processing. The decentralized nature of something like bitcoin has inspired people. Could we have a different model of the market? Could we imagine decentralizing, not just the technology, but also some of the rights and obligations of participating in such a network? So to make that abstract idea a bit more concrete: imagine if you've got a clearing house, and currently we send all our trades to the clearing house, it performs the processing and sends us back the result. Imagine if, instead, each of the participants formed a network, they operated peer-to-peer, and that peer-to-peer model then gets translated down into the technical solution. So that's a different way of workingyou can call that a distributed financial market infrastructure.

It's a big infrastructure change to the marketso why bother? What we see is quite a few potential benefits. These include radical simplification and rationalization. Another thread is you're able to speed up settlement times.

Insider: Tell me about Utility Settlement Coin and the Fnality investment.

Braine: The consortium was originally called Utility Settlement Coin, and then, about 2 years ago, a group of financial institutions so 14 banks and one exchange strategically invested to create the new entity, which was Fnality International. They're building a new payment system, and this is going to offer peer-to-peer settlements using an underlying blockchain platform. The money that moves on it will be one-to-one backed by funds that have been pre-deposited at a central bank, so it's effectively a pre-funding model. It allows a number of benefits in terms of settlement.

For example, you could continue operating outside of the window when the real time gross settlementRTGSis closed at the central bank. You could, for example, connect to other tokenized assets to allow atomic swap between them. If you had Fnality representing the payment leg on a payment blockchain, you could imagine a security leg on a security blockchain and the two of them could do instant settlement with the appropriate interconnect between the two. A key point here is that the money being backed by funds at the central bank means that there's lower risks associated with such payments.

Insider: You also work with the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA), right?

Braine: Yes. One of the things we've been progressing for a few years relates to a new standard for data and processing, and it's called the ISDA Common Domain Model. This model effectively provides a standard industry representation for events in the lifecycle of a trade. Currently, each institution builds their own solutions, so effectively, there's variation in how you code itsome may code in Java and others may code in C++, so different programming languages. They may store the data in different types of databases, and they may enrich the data with extra fields. So you've got variation there. Then, over time, each institution must manage and maintain its data stores. So across the industry, the same high-level functionality is implemented slightly differently on slightly different data sets. And each time there's a lifecycle event, they all need to sync up and reconcile to make sure that, yes, what's been affected in terms of an event, the before and after, is consistent.

That's incredibly inefficient as a solution. Imagine we had a browser for the internet, and each bank built their own browser, right? Of course we don't do that. We have a common browser, Chrome or Internet Explorer, we download it, we use it. So that same philosophy is being applied here. A distributed ledger de facto defines the common data structure that you all must use. And smart contract technology is a common process that they must all follow.

You then start getting the opportunity to transform the industry, and all the participants. And those opportunities don't come up very often. So I think we're living in interesting times where this technology is just reaching the right degree of maturity, and there's also appetite from the market participants to reduce costs.

Insider: Ok, tell me more about smart contracts, which I know you also research.

Braine: There are many, many business processes that could benefit from the rigor and standardization that smart contracts would bring. To give one example, interest rate swaps. So a few years ago, about 4 years ago, my team prototyped an interest rate swap from end to end. Complete end-to-end processing naturally fits with the idea of a smart contract, meaning the data that you construct at the beginning just flows throughyou don't transform it, you don't switch it into completely different systems.

The way I like to view it is, smart means automatable, and contract means enforceable. Other good use-cases include trade finance, loans, bonds, and syndicated loans. It's easy to identify 101 use cases for smart contracts; the challenge is identifying viable business cases where the industry can move together in concert, given that these are consortium plays, so you need your peers to be similarly motivated at the same time to grasp at the same propositions.

Insider: What sort of work are you doing in quantum computing?

Braine: Barclays started exploring quantum computing back in summer 2017. We did that by partnering with IBM. We set up a joint development project, and our goal initially was to learn more about quantum computing. It's a phenomenally complex topic, where even those that have quantitative research backgrounds find it challenging to understand the details.

We decided for our first proof of concept that we would look at a settlement optimization problem. This is a particular challenge where a market infrastructure looks to optimize the settlement of a batch of securities transactions. A typical batch may have 50,000 transactions, you've got many potential combinations that you could settle, and you need to work out what is the best combination. It's a problem that you typically can't solve perfectly, so you often run an optimization algorithm for long enough in order to solve it well enough, and then you repeat the batch later.

We were inspired by [the question]: could a quantum algorithm on a quantum computer solve that problem perfectly, or perhaps better than the classical ones? We looked at candidate quantum algorithms, we worked with IBM to implement an algorithm, we constructed candidate scenarios to run through test data, and we got the results. The key takeaway is that, for the first time, an algorithm has been run for settling securities transactions on a quantum computer. Obviously, it's only just test data and very small scale, so it's more of a proof of concept, but we've demonstrated that the proof of concept works.

In terms of next steps, we're currently exploring quantum machine learning. How many more buzzwords could you get into one conversation, right? We've run our first experiment comparing quantum and classical versions, and in the next couple of months, we'll be looking to publicly release our initial findings.

Insider: In real terms, what benefits might quantum computing bring to Barclays? And when?

Braine: We need to extrapolate for when we think the hardware will be sufficiently mature to be able to run real-world use cases. For perspective, we think that will be in the range of 4-8 years from now.

In terms of the type of benefits, it's almost like adding a special maths co-processor, and it's able to perform a number of functionsit's able to perform an optimization process faster than a traditional classical computer, or it's able to perform the process and get a higher-quality result. So this could be optimizing which assets you put in a portfolio, or running a number of Monte Carlo optimizations as part of a risk model. These types of things often require huge compute resources.

And that's why we're exploring this for researchnot because we think it could be perfectly used in the next year or two, but because we're learning, building a foundation. I would almost call it quantum awareness, where we're raising our awareness so that we could leverage it when the powerful machines come along in a few years' time that we could use for real world use cases.

Insider: Where is financial technology going next? How does that fit with traditional banking?

Braine: There are a number of key themes, one being machine learning and artificial intelligence. So the application of that technology, we've seen it deployed with fantastic effect, whether that's search or shopping or similar. There's great opportunity for those technologies to also be applied within financial services, particularly to further improve the customer experience.

Other key technologies include cloud computing.

Insider: Are you worried about disruption from tech startups?

Disruption is at the heart of my day job. We're often looking to see what technologies have potential for disruption, and to see how we could leverage or partner with third parties that have such potentially disruptive technologiesand also to understand the risks and potential issues that are associated with themso that we're able to have a sensible position in order to be able to advise the business.

Often if we're going to pick certain technologies, it may well be the case that what's viewed as a potential disruptor to Barclays could also be viewed as a potential partnership opportunity in terms of optimizing and improving some of our own internal processes.

Original post:

Meet the Barclays MD working to transform finance through distributed ledgers and quantum computing - Business Insider

Les Clayes-sous-Bois (Yvelines), France - April 22, 2021 Atos today officially inaugurates its new global Research & Development Lab in Les Clayes-sous-Bois, in the greater Paris metropolitan area (Yvelines), France. The new 8,000 m2 lab, which hosts around 350 of Atos highly qualified engineers, provides a modern space dedicated to research in quantum computing, high-performance computing, edge, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.

Supported by the Ile-de-France Region and built on Atos existing site at Les Clayes-sous-Bois, which employs almost 1,000 people, this lab is another milestone in Atos strategy to develop and globally position the historical site of Clayes-sous-Bois and the Ile-de-France Region as a strong center of technical expertise. Atos Quantum, Atos quantum computing research program and the first major quantum industry program in Europe, benefits from an investment of 5 million from the Ile-de-France Region as part of its Smart Industry strategy, adopted in July 2017.

Innovation to support the fight against global warming

Decarbonization is a key priority for Atos. The company is committed to reducing the global carbon emissions under its control and influence by 50% by 2025 and to achieve "zero net emissions", by 2028. The research developed in this new laboratory, meeting the highest environmental standards, will focus on innovation to support the fight against global warming, such as using quantum calculation or the energy efficiency of supercomputers to accelerate society's journey to carbon neutrality. Another example is the development of a supercomputer brain that will be able to predict and optimize energy consumption based on the workload and the energy available in the electricity providers grids.

Inauguration Ceremony

The inauguration ceremony saw Valrie Pcresse, President of the Ile-de-France Regional Council say: I am proud to be part of this development of the industry of the future in the Ile-de-France Region. This new building and investment show that we are preparing the future right here, right now. We are committed to making the Ile-de-France Region a territory of innovation, a digital leader at the heart of the economic fabric. This new R&D lab is in line with our plans to promote the implementation and development of strategic technologies, in particular quantum computing, in the Ile-de-France Region.

In partnership with the Ile-de-France Region, I am thrilled to officially open our new R&D Lab today which illustrates more than 50 years of research work carried out at our historical site of Clayes-sous-Bois. From this symbolic site we will drive forward our ambitious quantum computing program and develop strategic technologies, products and solutions that will be sold worldwide, and that will help shape a safe, decarbonized future said Elie Girard, CEO Atos.

Atos Quantum: a global program

The R&D lab will accommodate the research work conducted as part of the Atos Quantum program, launched in 2016, which aims to accelerate the development of scientific and industry-relevant quantum computing use-cases. Atos researchers developed the Atos Quantum Learning Machine (Atos QLM), the world's highest-performing commercially available quantum simulator, which is already being used in numerous countries worldwide including Finland, France, Germany, India, Japan, the UK and the United States, empowering major research programs in various sectors like industry or energy. Atos also recently launched Q-score, the first universal quantum metrics, applicable to all programmable quantum processors, measures a quantum systems effectiveness at handling real-life problems, rather than simply measuring its theoretical performance.

Watch the video presentation of the new Atos R&D laboratory at the following link:https://youtu.be/-TOyFZuf-LQ(in French). Elie Girard and Valrie Pcresse, President of the le-de-France Regional Council, discuss the new lab, followed by a virtual visit of the new site with Philippe Guiguen, Mayor of Clayes-sous-Bois and the entire Atos team: Sophie Proust, CTO; Pierre Barnab Head of Big Data and Cybersecurity; Arnaud Bertrand, Director of Strategy and Innovation Big Data and Cybersecurity; Agnes Boudot, Director of HPC, AI & Quantum activities and Cyril Allouche, R&D Director, Quantum Computing.

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About Atos

Atos is a global leader in digital transformation with 105,000 employees and annual revenue of over 11 billion. European number one in cybersecurity, cloud and high performance computing, the Group provides tailored end-to-end solutions for all industries in 71 countries. A pioneer in decarbonization services and products, Atos is committed to a secure and decarbonized digital for its clients. Atos operates under the brands Atos and Atos|Syntel. 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. http://www.atos.net

About the le-de-France Region

The le-de-France region plays a driving role for employment and French growth, both in terms of its economic weight and its influence.Leading economic region in Europe and third in the world, behind Tokyo and New York, the le-de-France is a territory of innovation, which concentrates 40% of Frances R&D activities, and which benefits from an international attractiveness.The le-de-France region acts in most of the areas that concern the daily life of the 12 million Franciliens: transport, but also high schools, economic development, the environment etc.In a space that covers 2% of the French territory but brings together 18% of its population and nearly 30% of the national GDP, the Region leads a development policy that places innovation and environment at its heart.

Press contacts:

Atos: Lucie Duchateau lucie.duchateau@atos.net - +33(0) 7 62 85 35 10

le-de-FranceRgion: Elonore Flaceliere - eleonore.flaceliere@iledefrance.fr

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Atos unveils global R&D Lab to drive innovation in Cybersecurity, High Performance Computing and Quantum - GlobeNewswire

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Superconducting loops technology Trapped ion technology Topological qubits technologyGlobal Quantum Computing Market, by Application:

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Table of Contents

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Global Quantum Computing Market : Industry Analysis and Forecast (2020-2027) by Technology, Application, Component, Industry, Region. - Clark County...