The Quantum Dragon heard that qBraid is offering a reward-based QUEST and took off, as usual, before waiting for all the details (that’s me on the bridge). Quantum University Education & Support Track (QUEST) is offering up to $5,000 for credits to access 25+ quantum computers, so be sure to hide before he finds out there’s no gold.
This week’s IQT News:
This week’s premium content:
- China Telecom’s Jiuzhang-4.0
- Access EuroHPC JU’s Quantum Computers
- Zapata Nonquantum has a sense of humor.
- Quantum Collective — Monthly Projects
This week’s Friends of The Quantum Dragon:
- “The clock is ticking and may be running out for some.” by Dr. Garfield Jones, EVP Strategy and Research at QuSecure
- “The hard part is changing encryption across real government systems without breaking the services people depend on.” by Rebecca Krauthamer, CEO and co-Founder of QuSecure
- “For our portfolio, this validates the thesis years early.” by Anis Uzzaman, Founder & CEO at Pegasus Tech Ventures
- The federal deadlines will cascade into supply chain requirements. by Vijay Viswanathan, Vice President of Product at ISARA
- “Many organisations have yet to grasp the true scale of the challenge.” by Kieran B., Head of Security Engineering at Bridewell
- “Mission assurance has to exist from day one.” by Brian Cunningham, EVP Strategy & Growth, QuSecure
In this edition:
- Don McMillan’s atom lost an electron?
- IBM’s 7-Angstrom Transistor
- Yuval Boger’s Clifford Gates
- China thinks stealing is “learning.”
- How much of the research needed to build, deploy, operate, and widely exploit practical and useful quantum computers have we completed?
- #85: “We can solve problems 43 million times bigger than anyone else.”
- What the heck is a “pre-apprenticeship”?
- I have the power!
- Do not open… for 250 years!!!
- Zurich Instruments will award 3 winners 1,500 CHF each.
- Diraq’s Quantum Computers Are Boring
Don McMillan’s atom lost an electron?
If Don McMillan actually wrote the first joke, I’ve been telling a variation of it for years. My version, though, doesn’t involve a bar. It’s just a 3-line conversation on a slide between an ytterbium ion and a strontium atom. I place it between an overview of QC modalities and trapped ions, explaining that ions lend themselves to humor.
IBM’s 7-Angstrom Transistor
I like to point out that the standard distance between atoms in a neutral atom array is 4 micrometers (that’s the starting point on QuEra’s Aquila, anyway), and that a nanoscale transistor could, in principle, fit between any 2 atoms with plenty of room to spare. Now the comparison is going to be even more extreme.
Yuval Boger’s Clifford Gates
If you still think “Quantum Bits” is for novices, wait until you get to “Clifford Gates.” The explanation for that comic strip introduces non-Clifford gates and magic state distillation, and I’m only about a quarter of the way through the book. What else is in store? Stay subscribed, buy the book, or both!
China thinks stealing is “learning.”
This isn’t specific to quantum, but it’s relevant. From the earliest web portals that were obvious knockoffs of the IBMQ Experience to the recent startups by researchers returning from the United States, China steals. I would argue that their leapfrogging lands them on their faces, though, because the quantum computers we can see suck.
How much of the research needed to build, deploy, operate, and widely exploit practical and useful quantum computers have we completed?
Jack Krupansky asked this question on LinkedIn, and I apparently voted with the masses. That’s good to know. However, the poll would be more informative if it had more respondents, so go ahead and let your opinion be known. If you don’t want it known, keep in mind that only Mr. Krupansky will know how everyone voted.
#85: “We can solve problems 43 million times bigger than anyone else.”
I spoke with Toby Cubitt, Co-Founder and CTO of Phasecraft about why we need algorithms when we don’t have hardware to run them on, a claim of 43,000,000X greater efficiency, the skillset needed to do what they do, quantum phase estimation (QPE) without controlled unitaries, the secret ingredient of their secret depth-reducing sauce, and more.
What the heck is a “pre-apprenticeship”?
The Chattanooga Quantum Collaborative has a pre-apprenticeship, and I admit to having absolutely no idea what that is. Is it the first in the nation pre-apprenticeship for quantum, or is it the first in the nation pre-apprenticeship? As the 2nd least qualified person in quantum, do I need something that comes before that?
I have the power!
Thanks to Dr. Michaela Eichinger for sharing Olivier Ezratty’s estimates on eFTQC vs HPC power consumption. This link may require a LinkedIn account.
Do not open… for 250 years!!!
To celebrate America’s 250th birthday, UC Berkeley is burying an 8-qubit superconducting quantum processor in a time capsule that is meant to not see the light of day for another 250 years. If you think back on the technological advancement of the last 250 years, you’ll realize that we’re going to look like uncivilized barbarians.
Zurich Instruments will award 3 winners 1,500 CHF each.
Need to travel? If you qualify and enter, you could be one of 3 randomly selected recipients of 1,500 CHF for purposes of attending physical or virtual scientific conferences, paying course fees, or buying textbooks. Oddly, there’s mention of randomness for fairness, but no mention of quantum randomness.
Diraq’s Quantum Computers Are Boring
Quantum is way too interesting for anything written about it to be boring, so for Diraq to characterize its silicon spin quantum computers as boring is, quite frankly, interesting. The point is valid, though: quantum technologies will have to become boring someday, and then, and only then, The Quantum Dragon will take a nap.