Commercial Quantum Computer
- templstolik
- Aug 17, 2023
- 6 min read
We offer a cloud-based, full-stack of systems, software, developer tools, and services to enable enterprises, government agencies, national laboratories, and academic organizations to build real applications using the power of quantum computing.
IBM today unveiled its first ever quantum computer designed for commercial use, the sleek-looking IBM Q System One. The company says it has no plans to sell the device, but will instead allow customers to perform quantum calculations over the internet.
Commercial Quantum Computer
Quantum computers offer the promise to vastly outperform regular machines at certain tasks by exploiting the strange properties of quantum physics, though as of yet no quantum device has achieved this milestone.
IBM has spent the past few years making increasingly powerful quantum hardware available to the outside world. In 2016, it put a five-qubit machine online, free for anyone to experiment with, but this is the first system designed with commercial clients in mind.
Google, which has been investing in the nascent technology for several years, is one of many companies including International Business Machines Corp. , D-Wave Systems Inc. and Honeywell International Inc. working to commercialize it. IBM and others have recently announced technological developments and planned milestones related to quantum computing within the next few years. Dario Gil, director of IBM Research, recently said 2023 would be an inflection point in that the errors of quantum computers would continue to decrease exponentially through software, as opposed to just hardware.
By harnessing quantum physics, this type of computing has the potential to sort through vast numbers of possibilities in nearly real time and come up with a probable solution. Traditional computers store information as either zeros or ones. Quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, which represent and store information in a quantum state that is a complex mix of zero and one.
Google, like many other companies investing in quantum computing, plans to offer its commercial-grade quantum-computing services over the cloud. Google is interested in many potential uses for the technology, such as building more energy-efficient batteries, creating a new process of making fertilizer that emits less carbon dioxide and speeding up training for machine-learning, a branch of artificial intelligence, Dr. Neven said.
There are numerous challenges to contend with, Dr. Neven said. For example, Google will need to work on lengthening the time that the qubits remain in their quantum state, because they are susceptible to disturbances in temperature, frequency and motion. Such changes can hurt the accuracy of a calculation or prevent it from being completed.
Construction on the expansion began in 2019, was delayed for a few months by pandemic-related work restrictions, and was officially completed in late 2020, said Erik Lucero, a quantum-computing research scientist at Google who led the design and construction of the campus. Hundreds of employees are expected to work there over the next few years, he said.
By 2025, nearly 40% of large companies are expected to create quantum-computing initiatives, according to Gartner. The global market for quantum-computing hardware will exceed $7.1 billion by 2026, according to Research and Markets, another research firm.
Public cloud providers such as Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Google are investing heavily in next-generation computing techniques, including quantum, as it becomes increasingly difficult to eke out performance gains in traditional chips, Mr. Dekate said.
Google has been offering companies and academics the chance to experiment with its early-stage quantum-computing technology since last year, Dr. Neven said. More enterprises and researchers will be able to access the services in the coming years, he said.
The The University of Tokyo will use the IBM Quantum System One, an integrated quantum computer system, to drive quantum research and development in Japan, namely in the areas of chemistry, optimization, and machine learning. IBM now has installed IBM Quantum System Ones on three continents.
China also has another quantum computer which is also one of the biggest in the world. The Jiuzhang 2.0 is based on photons instead of qubits. Its researchers claimed it could solve a problem around 1,024 times faster than classical supercomputers using 113 detected photons. However, these machines have no practical use now and remain experimental.
We need to take measures now to defend against what quantum computers will be able to do in the future in terms of encrypted data. China may be lagging behind the U.S. in terms of developing quantum computers, but considering the amount of investment that they are making in quantum technology overall, we can expect they will try to step up their game in this aspect as well. Meanwhile, as work continues on quantum computers, data is already being harvested from bad actors just waiting until the day they can access a quantum computer to decipher it.
The problem with building a quantum computer is that it is difficult and expensive, to the tune of millions of dollars. The difficulty stems primarily from the challenge of working with fragile qubits and tricky phenomena like decoherence.
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Sydney-based firm Silicon Quantum Computing (SQC) built the first integrated silicon quantum computer circuit manufactured at the atomic scale, in what has been touted as a "major breakthrough" on the road to quantum supremacy, a press statement reveals.
The atomic-scale integrated circuit, which functions as an analog quantum processor, may be SQC's biggest milestone since it announced in 2012 that it had built the world's first single-atom transistor.
The company says the integrated circuit was successfully manufactured two years ahead of schedule. Its founder claims the new development indicates that we could be a mere 5 years away from seeing commercial quantum computing products.
After manufacturing their atomic-scale circuit, the SQC team successfully used it to model the quantum states of a small, organized polyacetylene molecule. This, they say, provides definitive proof that the circuit can be used to model quantum systems with incredible accuracy.
In the statement, University of New South Wales (UNSW) Professor and SQC founder Michelle Simmon said "today's classical computers struggle to simulate even relatively small molecules due to the large number of possible interactions between atoms."
Simmons founded SQC in 2017 with $83 million in seed funding from UNSW, Telstra, Commonwealth Bank, and the NSW and federal governments. Quantum computing has the potential to change many fields, including physics, engineering, and computer sciences. Companies such as Google and IBM claim to have reached quantum supremacy, though their machines are still far from reaching consumers and are still in the early development and research phase.
Now that it has built its quantum integrated circuit, SQC aims to scale up and produce its hardware at a wider scale. Still, according to Simmons, the focus is on quality over quantity. She said the company's integrated circuit was made possible thanks to a "superbly precise manufacturing technology that is opening the door to a whole new world," and that "it is a huge step towards building a commercial quantum computer."
IBM Q systems are designed to one day tackle problems that are currently seen as too complex and exponential in nature for classical systems to handle. Future applications of quantum computing may include finding new ways to model financial data and isolating key global risk factors to make better investments, or finding the optimal path across global systems for ultra-efficient logistics and optimizing fleet operations for deliveries.
Designed by IBM scientists, systems engineers and industrial designers, IBM Q System One has a sophisticated, modular and compact design optimized for stability, reliability and continuous commercial use. For the first time ever, IBM Q System One enables universal approximate superconducting quantum computers to operate beyond the confines of the research lab.
Much as classical computers combine multiple components into an integrated architecture optimized to work together, IBM is applying the same approach to quantum computing with the first integrated universal quantum computing system. IBM Q System One is comprised of a number of custom components that work together to serve as the most advanced cloud-based quantum computing program available, including:
The IBM Q Quantum Computation Center opening later this year in Poughkeepsie, New York, will expand the IBM Q Network commercial quantum computing program, which already includes systems at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown, New York. This new center will house some of the world's most advanced cloud-based quantum computing systems, which will be accessible to members of the IBM Q Network, a worldwide community of leading Fortune 500 companies, startups, academic institutions, and national research labs working with IBM to advance quantum computing and explore practical applications for business and science. 2ff7e9595c
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