Category Archives: Quantum Computing

The primary challenge for practical quantum computing is error suppression, necessitating quantum error correction for extensive processing. However, implementing error-corrected logical qubits, where information is redundantly encoded across multiple physical qubits, presents significant challenges for achieving large-scale logical quantum computing.

A new study by Harvard scientists reports realizing a programmable quantum processor based on encoded logical qubits operating with up to 280 physical qubits. This is a critical milestone in the quest for stable, scalable quantum computing.

This new quantum processor can encode up to 48 logical qubits and execute hundreds of logical gate operations, a vast improvement over prior efforts. This system marks the initial showcase of running large-scale algorithms on an error-corrected quantum computer, signaling the arrival of early fault-tolerant quantum computation that operates reliably without interruption.

Denise Caldwell of the National Science Foundation said,This breakthrough is a tour de force of quantum engineering and design. The team has not only accelerated the development of quantum information processing by using neutral atoms but opened a new door to explorations of large-scale logical qubit devices, which could enable transformative benefits for science and society as a whole.

A quantum bit or qubit is one unit of information in quantum computing. In the world of quantum computing, in principle, it is possible to create physical qubits by manipulating quantum particles be they atoms, ions, or photons.

Harnessing the peculiarities of quantum mechanics for computation is more intricate than merely accumulating a sufficient number of qubits. Qubits are inherently unstable and susceptible to collapsing out of their quantum states.

The accurate measure of success lies in logical qubits, known as the coins of the realm. These are bundles of redundant, error-corrected physical qubits capable of storing information for quantum algorithms. Creating controllable logical qubits, akin to classical bits poses a significant challenge for the field. It is widely acknowledged that until quantum computers can operate reliably on logical qubits, the technology cannot truly advance.

Current computing systems have demonstrated only one or two logical qubits and a single quantum gate operationa unit of codebetween them.

The breakthrough by the Harvard team is built upon years of research on a quantum computing architecture called a neutral atom array, pioneered in Lukins lab. QuEra, a company commercializing this technology, recently entered into a licensing agreement with Harvards Office of Technology Development for a patent portfolio based on Lukins groups innovations.

A block of ultra-cold, suspended rubidium atoms is at the heart of the system. These atoms, serving as the systems physical qubits, can move around and form pairs or become entangled during computations.

Entangled pairs of atoms come together to form gates, representing units of computing power. The team had previously showcased low error rates in their entangling operations, establishing the reliability of their neutral atom array system.

In their logical quantum processor, the scientists have now demonstrated parallel, multiplexed control over an entire section of logical qubits using lasers. This approach is more efficient and scalable compared to individually controlling physical qubits.

Paper first author Dolev Bluvstein, a Griffin School of Arts and Sciences Ph.D. student in Lukins lab, said,We are trying to mark a transition in the field, toward starting to test algorithms with error-corrected qubits instead of physical ones, and enabling a path toward larger devices.

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Scientists created the first programmable, logical quantum processor - Tech Explorist

IBM Corp. today announced the launch of its newest quantum processor Heron, featuring 133 qubits of computing power that will serve as the foundation for a new series of processors capable of providing practical utility for science and research.

Alongside the new processor, the IBM unveiled the Quantum System Two, the companys first modular quantum computer powered by Heron, during Quantum Summit 2023, the companys annual quantum computing conference.

The technology giant also announced Condor, a 1,121-qubit processor that is part of IBMs focus on long-term research into developing large-scale quantum computing efforts. In a press briefing, Mattias Stephan, chief quantum architect and IBM fellow, said the device packed 50% more qubit density, with over a mile of flex cabling. The efforts in building the device, he said unlocked the road to scaling.

Although the processor has a massive number of qubits, Stephan said it has comparable performance to the433-qubit Osprey devicedebut in 2022. This is because simply stacking qubits doesnt make a processor faster or more powerful, architectural changes are needed. According to Stephan, what IBM learned from Condor, and its previous Eagle quantum processor, paved the way for the tunable architecture breakthrough of the Heron processor.

Heron is our best-performing quantum processor to date with up to a five-fold improvement in error reduction compared to our flagship Eagle device, said Stephan. This was a journey that was four years in the making. It was designed for modularity and scale.

In 2021, IBM debuted theEagle quantum processorfeaturing 127 qubits, becoming the first processor to break 100 qubits. Earlier this year, the companydemonstratedthat quantum processors can serve as the foundation for tools to provide as practical utility platforms for scientific research to solve problems for chemistry, physics and materials problems beyond brute force classical simulation of quantum mechanics. This opened up a variety of new use cases for researchers.

Since that demonstration, researchers and scientists at numerous organizations including the U.S. Department of Energy, the University of Tokyo, Q-CTRL and the University of Cologne have expanded their use of quantum computing to solve bigger and harder real-world problems such as drug discovery and tuning materials science.

We are firmly within the era in which quantum computers are being used as a tool to explore new frontiers of science, said Dario Gil, IBM senior vice president and director of research. As we continue to advance how quantum systems can scale and deliver value through modular architectures, we will further increase the quality of a utility-scale quantum technology stack.

The IBM Quantum System Two will become the foundation for IBMs next-generation quantum computing system architecture, powered by three Heron quantum processors. As a unit, it combines a scalable cryogenic refrigeration infrastructure and classical servers with modular qubit control electronics. As a result, it will be able to expand to relate to future needs and IBM plans to use the system to house future generations of quantum processors.

The first Quantum System Two is housed in a facility in Yorktown Heights, New York.

To assist with enabling the use of quantum computing for developers, IBM announced thatQiskitwill hit version 1.0 in February. Qiskit is an open-source software development toolkit for quantum that includes tools for writing and manipulating quantum programs and running them on the IBM Quantum Platform or a simulator.

Aimed at making it easier for developers and engineers to work with quantum computing, IBM announced Qiskit Patterns, a way to allow quantum developers to easily create code. It is a set of tools that will allow them to map classical problems, optimize quantum circuits using Qiskit Runtime and then process results.

With Qiskit Patterns and Quantum Serverless you can build, deploy, run, and in the future, share for other users to use, said Jay Gambetta, vice president of IBM Quantum.

Additionally, in a demonstration, Gambetta revealed that quantum developers will be able to use generative artificial intelligence powered by Watson X to make quantum circuits. Using this tool, a user would only need to write out a description of the quantum problem that they want to solve, and a foundation model named Granite, trained with Qiskit data, would do the heavy lifting for them.

We really see the full power of generative AI to simplify the developer experience, said Gambetta.

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IBM unveils next-gen 133-qubit Heron quantum processor and its first modular quantum computer - SiliconANGLE News

This week, IBM announced a pair of shiny new quantum computers.

The companys Condor processor is the first quantum chip of its kind with over 1,000 qubits, a feat that would have made big headlines just a few years ago. But earlier this year, a startup, Atom Computing, unveiled a 1,180-qubit quantum computer using a different approach. And although IBM says Condor demonstrates it can reliably produce high-quality qubits at scale, itll likely be the largest single chip the company makes until sometime next decade.

Instead of growing the number of qubits crammed onto each chip, IBM will focus on getting the most out of the qubits it has. In this respect, the second chip announced, Heron, is the future.

Though Heron has fewer qubits than Condorjust 133its significantly faster and less error-prone. The company plans to combine several of these smaller chips into increasingly more powerful systems, a bit like the multicore processors powering smartphones. The first of these, System Two, also announced this week, contains three linked Condor chips.

IBM also updated its quantum roadmap, a timeline of key engineering milestones, through 2033. Notably, the company is aiming to complete a fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2029. The machine wont be large enough to run complex quantum algorithms, like the one expected to one day break standard encryption. Still, its a bold promise.

Practical quantum computers will be able to tackle problems that cant be solved using classical computers. But todays systems are far too small and error-ridden to realize that dream. To get there, engineers are working on a solution called error-correction.

A qubit is the fundamental unit of a quantum computer. In your laptop, the basic unit of information is a 1 or 0 represented by a transistor thats either on or off. In a quantum computer, the unit of information is 1, 0, orthanks to quantum weirdnesssome combination of the two. The physical component can be an atom, electron, or tiny superconducting loop of wire.

Opting for the latter, IBM makes its quantum computers by cooling loops of wire, or transmons, to temperatures near absolute zero and placing them into quantum states. Heres the problem. Qubits are incredibly fragile, easily falling out of these quantum states throughout a calculation. This introduces errors that make todays machines unreliable.

One way to solve this problem is to minimize errors. IBMs made progress here. Heron uses some new hardware to significantly speed up how quickly the system places pairs of qubits into quantum statesan operation known as a gatelimiting the number of errors that crop up and spread to neighboring qubits (researchers call this crosstalk).

Its a beautiful device, Gambetta told Ars Technica. Its five times better than the previous devices, the errors are way less, [and] crosstalk cant really be measured.

But you cant totally eliminate errors. In the future, redundancy will also be key.

By spreading information between a group of qubits, you can reduce the impact of any one error and also check for and correct errors in the group. Because it takes multiple physical qubits to form one of these error-corrected logical qubits, you need an awful lot of them to complete useful calculations. This is why scale matters.

Software can also help. IBM is already employing a technique called error mitigation, announced earlier this year, in which it simulates likely errors and subtracts them from calculations. Theyve also identified a method of error-correction that reduces the number of physical qubits in a logical qubit by nearly an order of magnitude. But all this will require advanced forms of connectivity between qubits, which could be the biggest challenge ahead.

Youre going to have to tie them together, Dario Gil, senior vice president and director of research at IBM, told Reuters. Youre going to have to do many of these things together to be practical about it. Because if not, its just a paper exercise.

Something that makes IBM unique in the industry is that it publishes a roadmap looking a decade into the future.

This may seem risky, but to date, theyve stuck to it. Alongside the Condor and Heron news, IBM also posted an updated version of its roadmap.

Next year, theyll release an upgraded version of Heron capable of 5,000 gate operations. After Heron comes Flamingo. Theyll link seven of these Flamingo chips into a single system with over 1,000 qubits. They also plan to grow Flamingos gate count by roughly 50 percent a year until it hits 15,000 in 2028. In parallel, the company will work on error-correction, beginning with memory, then moving on to communication and gates.

All this will culminate in a 200-qubit, fault-tolerant chip called Starling in 2029 and a leap in gate operations to 100 million. Starling will give way to the bigger Blue Jay in 2033.

Though it may be the most open about them, IBM isnt alone in its ambitions.

Google is pursuing the same type of quantum computer and has been focused on error-correction over scaling for a few years. Then there are other kinds of quantum computers entirelysome use charged ions as qubits while others use photons, electrons, or like Atom Computing, neutral atoms. Each approach has its tradeoffs.

When it comes down to it, theres a simple set of metrics for you to compare the performance of the quantum processors, Jerry Chow, director of quantum systems at IBM, told the Verge. Its scale: what number of qubits can you get to and build reliably? Quality: how long do those qubits live for you to perform operations and calculations on? And speed: how quickly can you actually run executions and problems through these quantum processors?

Atom Computing favors neutral atoms because theyre identicaleliminating the possibility of manufacturing flawscan be controlled wirelessly, and operate at room temperature. Chow agrees there are interesting things happening in the nuetral atom space but speed is a drawback. It comes down to that speed, he said. Anytime you have these actual atomic items, either an ion or an atom, your clock rates end up hurting you.

The truth is the race isnt yet won, and wont be for awhile yet. New advances or unforeseen challenges could rework the landscape. But Chow said the companys confidence in its approach is what allows them to look ahead 10 years.

And to me its more that there are going to be innovations within that are going to continue to compound over those 10 years, that might make it even more attractive as time goes on. And thats just the nature of technology, he said.

Image Credit: IBM

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IBM Is Planning to Build Its First Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computer by 2029 - Singularity Hub

You can't miss out on these quantum computing picks

Quantum computing stocks should be on your radar. The vast potential of quantum technologies means well likely witness dramatic progress in AI, IoT, and clean energy technologies. These computers will give us the needed horsepower, but the tech is presently under a competitive research and development environment.

Regardless of the speculative nature of quantum computing stocks, we can already observe leaders. These companies are heading the pack in pioneering this new standard for the computing industry.

So, to know the three quantum computing stocks leading us forward, lets explore your best options.

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IBM (NYSE:IBM) warrants attention foremost.

Most recently, the company installed a 127-qubit quantum processor in its IBM Quantum System One machine at the University of Tokyo, Japan.

This significant development is not only one of the first quantum computers in East Asia, but also it challenges other regions for market dominance. Typically led by Europe and North America, this sets the stage for Asia to emerge as a pivotal player. And this may have critical competitive considerations for companies like IBM.

IBMs processor is expected to conduct high-level research in various fields ranging from finance to medicine to modeling complex biological processes.

Besides this recent development that should give quantum bulls a reason to smile, IBM is also undervalued on several key metrics. It effectively balances strong cash generation with a dividend yield of 4.14% and a price/earnings-to-growth (PEG) ratio of 0.43.

Source: IgorGolovniov / Shutterstock.com

Alphabets (NASDAQ:GOOG, NASDAQ:GOOGL) position in the quantum computing market is also formidable. The company made significant headway in February by reporting that it reduced computational errors in its quantum bits. Reducing these errors is crucial to making quantum computers usable and a key barrier to commercialization.

Complementing Alphabets goal of commercializing its quantum system this year is its impressive financials. Like IBM, its PEG ratio is 1.26, indicating expected growth at a reasonable price. Furthermore, it has retained robust top and bottom lines with a revenue of $297.13 billion and a net income of $66.73 billion.

Also, Wall Streets stance on Alphabet remains bullish. It carries a strong buy recommendation. Further, analysts predict an average 12-month price increase of 7.32%, with a high target of $180.

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Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is building an ecosystem to support its quantum computing services with its Q# development suite. Also, it onboards developers early to test its code and tools.

Therefore, the development of MSFTs community is one of the key reasons to be bullish on MSFT. Q# is striving to become the de facto standard. In fact, its similar to the way certain programming languages once fought for dominance amongst the development community. Today, we are left with a handful of the most popular.

Further, MSFT is taking a calculated gamble on its development of quantum technology. Its investing heavily in research and developing novel ways to improve error correction and fault tolerance. This approach is riskier, but if it pays off. It could give MSFT one of the most stable quantum computing systems on the market upon release, if not the most stable, thus giving it a significant advantage over its peers.

On the date of publication, Matthew Farley did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed are those of the writer, subject to theInvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.

Matthew started writing coverage of the financial markets during the crypto boom of 2017 and was also a team member of several fintech startups. He then started writing about Australian and U.S. equities for various publications. His work has appeared in MarketBeat, FXStreet, Cryptoslate, Seeking Alpha, and the New Scientist magazine, among others.

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Frontiers in Quantum Computing: 3 Stocks Leading the Way - InvestorPlace

How do you see AI and new technologies accelerating sustainability? and how it can accelerate sustainability as well.

We have very tangible examples of when we talk about sustainability. At least speaking for myself, we struggle in terms of understanding what sustainability is and how we can make it actionable. How can we track if some promises are kept? Can we measure what the Kenyan government is doing in terms of reforestation over time, for example?

The geospatial foundation model we have created [at IBM] is helping us quantify climate mitigating actions like reforestation, but also helping us understand how particular measures like putting up a fence can help. Its very encouraging because, not only can you see masses of trees growing, you can also quantify how many gigatons of carbon you can capture over the years.

So you make it tangible. That's probably one of my favourite aspects of what technology can do for sustainability.

As a computer scientist, there are very rare moments where you see history happening. In quantum this year, we have managed to achieve one which we call quantum utility. We have entered the quantum utility era.

Quantum utility is when you take a problem, and this case it was a small magnetisation problem, and we tasked one of our partners, the University of Berkeley to do their best classically, and we have taken the same problem. We map it to a quantum computer with our hardware today and we apply some error mitigation routines that we have created on top of our stack. These error mitigation routines are now available to everyone.

We were then in a position of showing better performance than the classic. So for the first time, we see for real, quantum utility beating classic in this particular experiment.

When we talk about quantum, we always talk about fault tolerance - having the perfect system with no computing errors. What we are doing now is trying to find, with our partners, more and more examples of this quantum utility - much broader and bigger examples of showing that the current quantum hardware is improving. Our operation routines can get us there.

First of all, how can we change our approach to build the hardware? Because we saw it classically, right? We started with bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger machines until we discovered that we needed to go modular.

What we are doing now is working on modularity for quantum processing - but modularity means that you need to establish the connectivity between the units. So we first started looking at classical links, but in the future we will also see quantum communications happening between the units, which is quite challenging. There's a bit of research behind it, from the hardware perspective, that's probably one of my personal highlights.

Another highlight probably is that I hope that we announce that we keep firmly implementing every milestone that we set ourselves in our roadmap.

You will see many companies working with [IBM] and many partners presenting quantum utility experiments already. That's going to be very refreshing - it's going to create a lot of momentum when more and more people see that. In this particular case, quantum: it's classic. So that's going to create a good vibe in the quantum community.

There is so much happening at the same time and at such speed.

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5 minutes with: Dr. Juan Bernabe Moreno, IBM - Technology Magazine

IBM announced the unveiling of its 1,121-qubit Condor quantum computing processor on Dec. 4. This is the companys largest by qubit count and, arguably, the worlds most advanced gate-based, superconducting quantum system.

Alongside the new chip, IBM delivered an updated roadmap and a trove of information on the companys planned endeavors in the quantum computing space.

The 1,121-qubit processor represents the apex of IBMs previous roadmap. Its preceded by 2022s 433-qubit Osprey processor and by 2021s 127-qubit Eagle processor.

In quantum computing terms, qubit count isnt necessarily a measure of power or capability so much as it is potential. While more qubits should theoretically lead to more capable systems eventually, the industrys current focus is on error correction and fault tolerance.

Currently, IBM considers its experiments with 100-qubit systems to be the status quo, with much of the current work focused on increasing the number of quantum gates processors can function with.

For the first time, writes IBM fellow and vice president of quantum computing Jay Gambetta in a recent blog post, we have hardware and software capable of executing quantum circuits with no known a priori answer at a scale of 100 qubits and 3,000 gates.

Gates, like qubits, are a potential measure of the usefulness of a quantum system. The more gates a processor can implement, the more complex functions can be performed by the system. According to IBM, at the 3,000 gates scale, its 100-qubit quantum systems are now computational tools.

The next major inflection point, per the blog post, will occur in 2029 when IBM will execute 100 million gates over 200 qubits with a processor its calling Starling.

This is followed, writes Gambetta, by Blue Jay, a system capable of executing 1 billion gates across 2,000 qubits by 2033.

Related: IBM brings utility-scale quantum computing to Japan as China and Europe struggle to compete

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IBM says it will have hit a quantum computing 'inflection point' by 2029 - Cointelegraph