Google wants to make programming quantum computers easier

Quantum computers are still in their infancy, but builders of the exotic machines want to encourage software developers to experiment with them. Programming the circuits on quantum machines is a real challenge . Instead of standard digital bits, which represent either 1 or 0, quantum computers use “qubits,” which can be in both states at once thanks to a phenomenon known as superposition. Qubits can also influence one another even if they’re not physically connected. Moreover, they stay in their delicate quantum state for no longer than the blink of an eye. Exploiting them requires completely different software, and only a small band of developers currently has the highly specialized knowledge to write such programs. Google wants to help change that. It has just released Cirq, a software toolkit that lets developers create algorithms without needing a background in quantum physics. Cirq is an open-source initiative, which means anyone can access and modify the software. Google likens it to its popular TensorFlow open source toolkit that has made it easier to build machine-learning software. For now, developers can use Cirq to create quantum algorithms that run on simulators. But the goal is to have it help build software that will run on a wide range of real machines in the future. The tech giant has also released OpenFermion-Cirq, a toolkit for creating algorithms that simulate molecules and properties of materials. Indeed, chemistry is among the applications in which quantum computers are likely to be of most use in the short term. One of the companies that worked with Google on Cirq’s development is Zapata Computing, whose early focus is on software for chemistry and materials (see “The world’s first quantum superstore—or so it hopes—is here”). Another Google partner is Quantum Benchmark, which helps people assess the performance of different kinds of quantum hardware for various applications. “Cirq gives us an accessible platform for providing our tools to users,” says Joseph Emerson, the firm’s CEO and founder. There are other open-source initiatives already under way that let developers build code for some existing quantum machines, but Google’s move is significant because the company has been at the forefront of developing powerful quantum processors like the Bristlecone chip in the image above, which holds the record for number of qubits (see our qubit counter here).  Researchers working in the quantum field say that sharing code openly will help foster a more vibrant developer community, just as it has in other areas of software. “We’re at such an early stage in the development of quantum computing that it’s to everyone’s advantage that things are done out in the open,” says Andrew Childs, who is co-director of the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science at the University of Maryland. The other thing that will foster interest is greater accessibility to quantum computers themselves, many of which still reside in academic labs. Companies like IBM and Rigetti Computing have already made their machines accessible to people who want to run algorithms on them, and Google looks set to follow suit. It says it plans to make the Bristlecone processor available via the computing cloud, and that developers will be able to use Cirq to write programs for it.

https://www-technologyreview-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.technologyreview.com/s/611673/google-wants-to-make-programming-quantum-computers-easier/amp/?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.technologyreview.com%2Fs%2F611673%2Fgoogle-wants-to-make-programming-quantum-computers-easier%2F

Cloud quantum computing calculates nuclear binding energy

#Cloud @quantumcomputing has been used to calculate the binding energy of the deuterium nucleus – the first-ever such calculation done using quantum processors at remote locations. Nuclear physicists led by Eugene Dumitrescu at @Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US used publicly available software to achieve the remote operation of two distant quantum computers. Their work could lead to new opportunities for scientists in many fields who want to use quantum simulations to calculate properties of matter. In previous research, scientists have worked alongside quantum computer hardware developers to create quantum simulations. These typically use between two and six qubits to calculate a quantum property of matter – calculations that can be extremely time-consuming to do with a conventional computer. As the number of qubits available in quantum computers increase, the hope is that quantum simulations will be able to do calculations well beyond the reach of even the most powerful conventional computers. However, doing simulations alongside quantum computer specialists can be an inefficient process and the research would be much more streamlined if scientists were able to operate quantum computers themselves. @Rigetti and @IBM In response to this issue, two companies have released software which allows their #quantumcomputers – Q Experience from IBM, and the #19Q from Rigetti – to be operated remotely through #cloud services. The IBM quantum processor has 16 qubits, while the Rigetti device has 19 qubits. Dumitrescu’s team used the software to calculate the binding energy of the deuterium nucleus – the energy required to prise apart the proton and neutron that comprise the nucleus. The team’s novel method required some precautions. Working via the cloud, the rate at which calculations could be made was limited, meaning the researchers needed to adjust their quantum measurements to account for the slower rate. With such measures in place, Dumitrescu’s team calculated the binding energy on both quantum computers to within 2% of the actual measured value.

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2018/jan/29/cloud-quantum-computing-calculates-nuclear-binding-energy

A Quantum Boost for a Different Kind of Computer

#QuantumComputers capable of mind-boggling computations are finally on the horizon. But what will the first useful machines look like? Industry heavy hitters including @IBM, @Google, @Microsoft, and @Intel, as well as a few startups like @Rigetti Computing and @QuantumCircuits Incorporated, are all making steady advances toward more capable quantum computers by using superconducting circuits cooled to extreme temperatures. Meanwhile, two research teams have demonstrated that an approach largely ignored by industry—using trapped atoms to perform calculations—can be scaled up to a new level of complexity and used to perform valuable work. The resulting systems are not universal quantum computers capable of performing any calculation, but they suggest that an atomic approach may have more potential than presumed. The work also hints that atoms could ultimately offer a better way to turn laboratory systems into large-scale practical quantum computers. The superconducting approach has proved successful partly because the engineering techniques used to fabricate silicon circuitry have been honed over the past several decades (see “10 Breakthrough Technologies 2017: Practical Quantum Computers”). But it is possible to build a quantum computer using a wide range of approaches. Related Story 50 Smartest Companies 2017 Our editors pick the 50 companies that best combine innovative technology with an effective business model. In two papers published today in the journal Nature, a team at MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and another from the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards in Washington D.C., reveal that they have built specialized types of quantum calculator, each of which uses more than 50 qubits—well beyond what had been demonstrated previously. In both cases, the researchers created quantum simulators, machines capable of using analog calculations to model how quantum particles interact. The two systems both use atoms but work in different ways. The MIT-Harvard system handles 51 qubits by using lasers to trap neutral atoms in an excited state. The Maryland-NIST machine, which handles 53 qubits, traps ytterbium ions in place using gold-coated electrodes. Together, they suggest that an alternative approach to building quantum machines might yet have the potential to challenge the one being pursued by industry. “While our system does not yet constitute a universal quantum computer, we can effectively program it by controlling the interactions between the qubits,” says Mikhail Lukin, a physicist at Harvard who developed on of the systems in collaboration with Vladan Vuletic at MIT. Will Zeng, a researcher at Rigetti Computing, a company that has received tens of millions in venture funding to pursue quantum computing, says quantum simulation at this scale is a significant step. In fact, simulating quantum effects was the original purpose for a quantum computer proposed by physicist Richard Feynman more than 40 years ago. Now scientists “are able to show some of the potential inherent in quantum computers, so the results are exciting,” he says. Quantum computers work in a fundamentally different way from conventional computers. While a normal computer takes binary bits of information, encoded as either 1 or 0, and performs calculations on them one after another, a quantum computer exploits two counterintuitive features of quantum mechanism—entanglement and superposition—to perform calculations in parallel. As a result, it can calculate with large amounts of information in far less time. Several dozen quantum bits can perform computations on billions of pieces of information in one step. The technology remained a pipe dream among physicists for years, but it undoubtedly has enormous potential. Excitement is now growing about finally building machines capable of doing useful work. The 50-qubit benchmark is significant because around that point, quantum machines become capable of performing calculations that would be difficult, if not impossible, to run on even the most enormous supercomputer available. Some scientists refer to this as “quantum supremacy” (see “Google Reveals a Blueprint for Quantum Supremacy” and “IBM Raises the Bar with a 50-Qubit Quantum Computer”). Both IBM and Google are developing general-purpose superconducting quantum computers capable of using around the same number of qubits. Sign up for Weekend Reads Our guide to stories in the archives that put technology in perspective. Your email Sign Up Manage your newsletter preferences Perhaps more significant, the qubits in the new atomic systems may be better suited to scaling up, says Chris Monroe, a professor at the University of Maryland and the lead author on one of the papers. The qubits in solid-state systems are not identical, meaning a system needs to be carefully calibrated, and this can be tricky as the size of a machine grows. In contrast, qubits made using atoms, while more difficult to control, are identical and need no tuning. “Atoms are, in a sense, the perfect qubit,” Monroe says. He adds that atomic systems may prove easier to reconfigure, making them more suitable to tackling a wider range of problems. That isn’t to say building larger, more practical quantum systems will be easy for anyone. “We think we can go to around a thousand quantum bits in a straightforward way, but the situation is less clear beyond that,” says Vuletic. Just as important, we are only getting hints of how useful quantum computers will really be. In a landmark study published this September, a team at IBM used a quantum computer, called IBM Q, to simulate the structure of beryllium hydride, the most complex molecule ever analyzed in this way. We probably won’t know what these machines are capable of until many more engineers and programmers get their hands on them. “We’re starting to move beyond the era of physics to quantum engineering,” says UMD’s Monroe

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609581/a-quantum-boost-for-a-different-kind-of-computer/

Why Rigetti Computing Could Beat Google and Intel to the Quantum Computer

@Rigetti Computing wants to create a whole new type of computer that uses quantum physics to supercharge #artificialintelligence. The startup, based out of Berkeley, California, is facing off against @Google, @IBM and @Intel, all of which are aiming to build a stable #quantumcomputer. The first company to pull it off effectively could see itself at the heart of a computing revolution, and there’s reason to think Rigetti could get there first. “This is going to be a very large industry—every major organization in the world will have to have a strategy for how to use this technology,” Chad Rigetti, the 38-year-old founder of the company, told Wired in June. Unlike regular computers, which store information in bits made up of either zeros and ones, quantum machines can use both zero and one at the same time in what’s called a “qubit.” It sounds like a small change, but it enables computers to run more tasks at once. Just 50 qubits can represent 10,000,000,000,000,000 numbers, a scale a regular computer would need petabytes of data to hold. This could lead to a big shift in power. Yuri van Geest, founder of SingularityU in the Netherlands and an expert in the singularity, said at last year’s Pirate Summit in Cologne, Germany, that a quantum computer will be built that has the same computational power as every computer on earth today combined. It could lead to a “new era on this planet,” as analytical jobs fall aside in the face of ultra-powerful machines. There’s a big reward up for grabs to the first company that harnesses this. Intel’s director of quantum hardware, Jim Clarke, holds the new 17-qubit superconducting test chip. Google and Intel have both experimented with quantum computers to varying results. Google recently announced that it will be ready to show “quantum supremacy” — a machine that is better than a regular computer at specific tasks — in a matter of months, and it’s conducted experiments with nine qubit systems. At the same time, Intel has taken the wraps off a 17-qubit chip, but it requires a temperature 250 times colder than deep space to operate effectively. But Rigetti is taking a different approach. The startup, which has around 80 employees and $70 million in funding, is building a business from scratch geared around quantum computers.

https://www.inverse.com/article/38424-rigetti-quantum-computer-could-beat-google-intel

Google Debuts Software to Open Up Quantum Computers for Chemists

Google unveiled software aimed at making it easier for scientists to use the quantum computers in a move designed to give a boost to the nascent industry. The software, which is open-source and free to use, could be used by chemists and material scientists to adapt algorithms and equations to run on quantum computers. It comes at a time when @Google, @IBM, @Intel Corp., @Microsoft Corp. and @DWave Systems Inc. are all pushing to create #quantumcomputers that can be used for commercial applications.  Already, Google, IBM and D-Wave allow businesses to experiment with using not-very-powerful quantum computers for free through their cloud networks. Quantum computers could, in theory, be orders of magnitude more powerful than existing conventional supercomputers. Many believe they will enable people to do things once considered impossible -- from simulating chemical catalysts and modeling highly-complex systems, like climate, to breaking almost all public key encryption. But so far, the quantum machines these companies have built are not powerful or accurate enough to outperform conventional computers at most tasks. Google, which is part of Alphabet Inc., partnered with startup Rigetti Computing -- a rival in the effort to build practical quantum computers -- to create the new software. Researchers at ETH Zurich, the U.S. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, the University of Michigan, Harvard University, the University of Oxford, Dartmouth College and NASA also helped design the software, Google said in a blog post. Called OpenFermion, the new software contains a library of algorithms for simulating how electrons interact, which is important for work in both chemistry and material science, on a quantum computer. Until now, these interactions could only be simulated on powerful conventional computers. Chemists would have had to team up with specialized quantum developers and done a lot of coding to be able to run the equations on a quantum machine. But Google and the other developers are releasing two plug-ins that will allow OpenFermion to directly translate algorithms from two of the most popular conventional simulators, Psi4 and PySCF, to run on a quantum computer. The software is also designed to be compatible with several different quantum computers, including the ones being developed by Google, Rigetti and IBM. Google has said it plans before the end of the year to achieve a milestone in computer science known as "quantum supremacy" -- using a quantum computer to do something that no conventional computer can do.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-23/google-debuts-software-to-open-up-quantum-computers-for-chemists

Global Quantum Computing Market 2017 by Key Players – IonQ, QbitLogic, Qubitekk, Rigetti Computing, QC Ware Read More http://techannouncer.com/global-quantum-computing-market-2017-by-key-players-ionq-qbitlogic-qubitekk-rigetti-computing-qc-ware/

Global #QuantumComputing Market 2017 by Key Players – #IonQ, #QbitLogic, #Qubitekk, #RigettiComputing, #QCWare

QuantumComputing Industry including (both global and regions) Industry Size (both volume – Unit and value – million USD), Market Share, Production data, Consumption data, Trade data, Price – USD/Unit, Cost, Gross margin, Analysis, Forecast etc The Quantum Computing Industry research study has been composed using key inputs from industry experts. Furthermore, the extensive primary and secondary research data with which the report has been composed helps deliver the key statistical forecasts, in terms of both revenue and volume. In addition to this, the trends and revenue analysis of the global Quantum Computing market has been mentioned in this report. A detailed segmentation evaluation of the Quantum Computing market has been provided in the report. Detailed information about the key segments of the market and their growth prospects are available in the report.

The Quantum Computing Industry in the globe is examined on the basis of pricing of the products, total volume produced, the dynamics of demand and supply and the revenue generated by the products. Various analytical tools such as investment return, feasibility and market attractiveness analysis has been used in the report to provide a comprehensive picture of the global Quantum Computing market.

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The findings of this Quantum Computing report will prove valuable in formulating new Industry entry plans, financial models and competition tracking. The Quantum Computing market research study has been composed using key inputs from industry experts. This will give a clear perspective to the readers how the Quantum Computing market will fare globally.

 http://techannouncer.com/global-quantum-computing-market-2017-by-key-players-ionq-qbitlogic-qubitekk-rigetti-computing-qc-ware/