U.S. Government Soliciting Proposals for Quantum Characterization of Intermediate Scale Systems

In a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) the U.S. Army Research Office (ARO) in association with the National Security Agency (NSA) are soliciting proposals to research efficient and practical protocols and techniques that allow Quantum Characterization, Verification, and Validation (QCVV) of larger systems with direct relevance to Fault Tolerant Quantum Computing (FTQC), and to demonstrate these protocols on intermediate-scale systems 10-20 qubits in size. Much of the previous work performed to characterize quantum qubits has been performed using one and two qubit measurements such as the qubit fidelity measurements that we show on our Qubit Quality page. However, as systems get larger with an eye towards building fault tolerant machines the number of measurements to fully characterize a system using these previous approaches would grow exponentially.  It would be helpful to develop ways of evaluating these machines by selectively characterizing only the subset of information relevant to FTQC.  The purpose of this program will be to research proposals and techniques to achieve this.

The BAA is requesting proposals in two categories.  The first is for integrating theoretical and experimental research to identify and address the challenges of QCVV for intermediate-scale quantum systems. The second is for theoretical research that may significantly advance QCVV through novel approaches.  The agencies expect to make multiple awards with a maximum of $1.5M per year for each Category 1 awards, $700K per year for each Category 2 awards and $400K per year for each Category 2 awards that are theory only. The program and awards are expected to run for a four year period.

The BAA is available for Institutions of higher education (foreign and domestic), nonprofit organizations, and for-profit concerns (large and small businesses). Those interested in applying are encouraged to submit white papers by January 28, 2020 with a final proposal due by March 17, 2020.

For those interested in reading the full BAA, you can find a summary along with a link to download the full PDF file on the government’s contract opportunity site here.

December 20, 2019

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Japan-IBM Partnership Formed; IBM Q System One to Be Installed in Japan

IBM and the University of Tokyo have announced a partnership to encourage and promote quantum computing research in Japan. This partnership is similar to one they established with Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in Germany last September. Key elements of the program include:

• IBM will install an IBM Q System One at an IBM facility in Japan. This will be IBM’s first quantum computer installation in Asia and only the second outside of the United States. It will provide students and researchers in Japan with the hands-on opportunity to explore quantum algorithms, applications and software and develop practical applications of quantum computing.
• IBM and the University of Tokyo will set up a quantum system technology center for development of components and technologies, such as advanced cryogenic and microwave test capabilities, for next generation quantum computers.
• IBM’s Japan quantum hub which they previously established with Keio University will be expanded to encourage more companies to join and explore the benefits of quantum computing in a variety of industries including finance, chemistry and materials, pharma, automotive manufacturing and logistics.

For more information on this announcement, you can read IBM’s press release here and a related IBM Research blog posting here.

December 19, 2019

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Observations from the 2019 Q2B Conference

I recently attended the third annual Q2B Conference on December 10-12, 2019 in San Jose, California.  The Q2B conference continues to grow and had about 540 attendees representing many different quantum hardware/software companies, end users, universities, government agencies, and venture capital communities. This number is double the attendance of the first Q2B conference in 2017.

This report is not a comprehensive listing of everything that went on at the conference.  There were several sessions that occurred in parallel and I needed to choose which ones to attend.  In addition, there were several sessions that covered topics that were similar to items covered in other conferences, published technical papers or previous Q2B events.  So I will only cover those items that I found new, interesting and relevant.  My apologies in advance to those folks who wanted to know about things that I do not cover here.  However, QC Ware did record videos of all the presentations and will be posting most of the videos and presentations from the conference within the next month or two.

Google
John Martinis presented the Sycamore chip and the previously published results of the Quantum Supremacy experiment.  But the most interesting part of his talk was when he mentioned that they have already fabricated an improved version of the Sycamore chip and were currently testing it. Although he didn’t disclose full details of the chip, he did hint that the number of qubits have been increased from 53 to 57+.  Also, this new device should have even better performance than Sycamore with a particular mention of improved readout fidelity.

IBM
Anthony Annunziata discussed the IBM Q systems and the IBM Q Network. They current have a total of 15 systems available in the cloud. The most interesting thing for us in this presentation was the announcement that they were opening up access to the OpenPulse API for people who want to research how to control the pulses that perform the actual control of the qubits. This will require newly released version 0.14 of Qiskit but will allow people to control the pulses over the cloud for the first time.  More about this can be found in a newly released IBM quantum computing blog entry titled Get to the heart of real quantum hardware.

Microsoft
The most significant thing to us at Q2B was not the presentation itself, but the display in a glass case at their booth of a new cryo-CMOS control chip.  The chip would be able to potentially control up to 50,000 qubits with just three wires that come in from outside the fridge. We recently posted a news article describing this chip in more detail and you can find the article here.

Honeywell
Honeywell has been in stealth mode with their ion trap technology development, but they pulled the curtains open slightly with a presentation by Tony Uttley. Although he didn’t mention too many of the technical details of their machines, he did mention three advantages that they have including long coherence time qubits, high resolutions for qubit rotations, and the ability to take a measurement on a single qubit and do conditional executions based upon the result  (a quantum IF statement, if you will). This capability is enabled by the long coherence times of the ion traps and their ability to take the measurement on one qubit while keeping all the others in their quantum state. Although we will need to see the details of this when Honeywell has the broad commercial launch of their machines in the Spring of 2020 to fully understand how it works, we are not aware of any of the other quantum platforms currently having this capability. Later on, in a software session, one of their researchers Mike Foss-Feig presented a paper titled “Solving large problems with small quantum computers” that appears to utilize this capability.

Rigetti
Chad Rigetti discussed their 32-qubit Aspen-7 processor and their newly announced relationship with Amazon Web Services.  We had previously covered this in a news article published earlier this month which you can see here. However, in his presentation he disclosed for the first time that they had implemented a new and additional family of parameterized two-qubit gates in their architecture called the XY(θ) gate.  And when the value of θ is equal to 𝜋, this will implement the iSWAP gate. The importance of having a richer set of gates available is that it allows a reduction in circuit depth which will reduce errors and improve solution quality. In a newly released blog paper, a Rigetti engineer indicated that this could provide an average gate depth reduction of 32% for a possible random circuit. For those of us coming from a classical computer background, this is somewhat like adding a new instruction to a microprocessor’s instruction set that allows one to collapse a multi-instruction sequence down to one. Details of this new family of two qubits gates can be found in a Rigetti blog entry here and a technical paper posted on arXiv here.

Xanadu
Xanadu is working in both the software and hardware areas.  In the software area they have been working on several quantum readiness projects using their Strawberry Fields and PennyLane software. PennyLane can work with several different quantum hardware platforms and machine learning libraries. Not just their own. Zach Vernon presented the Xanadu hardware technology based upon Gaussian Boson Sampling (GBS) which utilizes a continuously variable unit called a qumode instead of a qubit.  Zach mentioned that Xanadu currently has a 12 qumode system running in their lab with a goal of having a system with 50+ qumodes available by the end of 2020.

Horizon Quantum Computing
Joe Fitzsimons of Horizon Quantum Computing presented a new and unique software approach and working to provide a means of compiling classical code for quantum processors. The company is creating a new programming language called Carbon which is intended to be a subset of the classical Octave/Matlab programming languages for numerical programming.  The intent is to provide a capability for classical numerical programmers to convert their programs into something which can run on a quantum computer without requiring the programmer to understand the intricacies of how the quantum computers work.  Their software will transform an application program through four levels of software abstraction until it reaches the lowest level which would then be able to work on a gate level machine.  Horizon’s software is still in development but should present some very interesting possibilities when it is released.

December 14, 2019

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D-Wave Announces New CEO and Signs Agreements with NEC

D-Wave is finishing the year with a pair of announcements. First, it indicated that CEO Vern Brownell will be retiring at the end of the year and that current chief product officer and executive vice president of research and development Alan Baratz will take over as CEO. Baratz joined D-Wave in 2017 and has overseen many of the recent developments including launch of the Leap™ Cloud Service as well as the development of D-Wave’s next-generation Advantage™ quantum system. At this time, we are not expecting any significant changes in D-Wave’s strategy due to this management change.

The agreements with NEC will include several areas of activity. NEC will be able to act as an authorized reseller of D-Wave’s Leap cloud service, they will jointly work with D-Wave to provide applications support and development for customers in Japan, and finally, the two companies will jointly develop hybrid services that combine the power of NEC’s supercomputers and other classical systems with D-Wave’s quantum technology including D-Wave Hybrid™, an open-source workflow platform for building and running quantum-classical hybrid applications. NEC will also be making a financial investment of $10 million into D-Wave and this is expected to close shortly.

For more, you can view the news release about the CEO change on the D-Wave web site here and the news release about the agreements with NEC here.

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How Many Years Until a Quantum Computer Can Break RSA-2048?

One of the most frequently asked questions about quantum computing relates to how long before a quantum computer can break a public key cryptography code such as RSA-2048. Most of the time, the response is a general answer of “perhaps 10 years or more”. We have tried to analyze this ourselves in an article titled Applying Moore’s Law to Quantum Qubits and estimated this could happen anywhere between the years 2028 and 2041 depending upon how much error correction is required.
But in October of 2019 a more structured analysis called the Quantum Threat Timeline was published by the Global Risk Institute in association with Dr. Michele Mosca and Dr. Marco Piani of quantum-safe cybersecurity company evolutionQ that we think deserves more attention. They surveyed a set of 22 thought leaders who are expert in many areas of quantum science and technology who come from both industry and academia and located in four different continents. The survey generated a wealth of data which you can view in the links we list below, but you can see a quick summary below of their opinions on just one of the questions from the survey in the chart below.

For those who want to dig into this further, you can view the introduction to the report on the Global Risk Institute’s web site here, you can download the Executive Summary here, and you can download the full report that shows who was surveyed, the questions that were asked, and the details of the answers here.

December 13, 2019

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Intel, Microsoft Disclose Cryo-CMOS Quantum Control Chips

If you want to better understand what some of the next developments needed to continue scaling up the size of quantum computers, you should look at the picture below.

Cabling in the Google Sycamore Processor (Credit: Google)

This design requires the routing of approximately 200 coaxial cables that start at room temperature (300 K degrees) and go down the dilution refrigerator to the qubit chip which operates at about 10 millikelvin.  The mechanical engineering challenges for such a design are quite significant.  In fact, Google mentioned at the recent Q2B conference that the reason the Sycamore is a 53 qubit processor instead of 54 is not due to a bad qubit, but rather the fact that one of the cables is broken! Now imagine trying to extend this design to 1000 qubits.  Besides the physical space challenges involved with routing thousands of wires, there are also the thermal as well as crosstalk/signal integrity issues that would arise. So a discrete cabling approach will no longer be viable and new approaches need to be developed.

So this is where cryo-CMOS control chips fit in and several recent announcements show progress in this area.  The first is a development from Intel called Horse Ridge. Horse Ridge is a highly integrated, mixed-signal SOC built with Intel’s 22nm FinFET technology designed specifically to control both the superconducting and spin qubit technologies that Intel is developing.  It currently runs at 4 Kelvin which is within the range of possible operation of spin qubits, but would require some routing of signals from that level to the 15 millikelvin level required for superconducting qubits.

Although Intel is not releasing full technical details on this chip yet, they did tell us they will be presenting it at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in February 2020 in San Francisco.  At this time, the chip is intended for Intel’s internal use only and a picture of this chip on a test board is shown below.

Stefano Pellerano, principal engineer at Intel Labs, holds Horse Ridge. (Credit: Walden Kirsch/Intel Corporation)

The second disclosure has come from Microsoft’s team in Australia along with their collaborators at Purdue University.  They have developed a qubit control chip with over 100,000 transistors that operates at roughly the 100 millikelvin level.  It is implemented in a 28 nm fully depleted silion-on-insulator (FDSOI) technology and Microsoft is claiming this will allow them to control up to 50,000 qubits with just three wires. Microsoft has posted two technical papers describing this chip (links are posted at the end of this article) and the picture below shows how it was recently displayed it in a glass case at the Q2B Conference in San Jose.

Microsoft’s Cryo-CMOS Qubit Control Chip on a Test Board

Finally we should note that Google presented a paper earlier this year at ISSCC 2019 on “A 28nm Bulk-CMOS 4-to-8GHz <2mW Cryogenic Pulse Modulator for Scalable Quantum Computing”.  Although the Google chip was a prototype chip that appeared to only support one qubit, its operation temperature was 3 Kelvin will certainly be used to provide valuable information for development of larger chips.

References

If you want to see more details about the chips mentioned in this article, here are the links.

· Intel’s News Release on their Horse Ridge Chip
· Microsoft’s First Paper on their Cryo-CMOS Control Chip
· Microsoft’s Second Paper With Additional Information on Cryo-CMOS Control Interfaces
· Google’s Paper on their Cryogenic Pulse Modulator Prototype

December 13, 2019

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Why Quantum Startups are Hooking Up with Classical Computer Companies

We are now starting to see more and more relationships between established classical computer companies and quantum startups.  Recently we’ve seen Microsoft ink cloud partnerships with IonQ, Honeywell, and QCI; Amazon announce partnerships with Rigetti, IonQ, and D-Wave; and Atos start working with Zapata.  There are good reasons why these classical/quantum relationships are forming and we predict there will be more in the future.

One thing that is an important element for success in the computing business is establishing and retaining customer relationships that builds trust so that the vendor and end user work together in solving problems.  Many of the classical computing companies have spent decades doing this and will have a long record of successful program executions and a very large rolodex of key individuals up and down the chain at their multiple customers. But many of the classical computing companies don’t have strong quantum technology because they’ve been so focused on constantly improving their classical computing capabilities.

On the other hand, the quantum startups may have the technology, but not the customer contacts nor a long track record of successful customer programs.  So it is very difficult for them to approach large, conservative enterprise companies as a new startup and gain their trust. It is particular difficult at this stage of the technology because there are so many different quantum technologies, incompatible software platforms, and lots of hype and these things will make the enterprises extra cautious.  These enterprise companies will see lots of claims, but can’t really tell which ones will turn out to be true. One thing that worries them is that they make a large investment in a particular quantum technology or approach that ultimately turns out to be a dead end.

IBM is perhaps the one company that has both internal quantum technology and enterprise sales expertise for complex systems. But even they realize that their technology can cover all the bases, particularly in software and applications, so they established the IBM Q Network and have partnered with several quantum software startups. And while Google has certainly been very successful selling ads for their search engine, they have nowhere near as much experience installing large complex systems at customer’s sites.

Since most of the quantum algorithms being developed are hybrid classical/quantum solutions that require both capabilities, an additional advantage for the classical computing companies is the ability to sell even more classical computing products and services for use with the quantum products and services.

So what’s next?  There are still a few large classical computing companies that still have no discernable quantum computing programs.  Examples include Dell, HPE, Lenovo, and Oracle. We do believe that these companies will decide to get into this market in one way or the other.  But we’ll have to wait and see what form their quantum activity will take and when they decide to do it.

December 7, 2019

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Amazon Enters the Quantum Computing Business

In a multi-pronged thrust, Amazon through its Amazon Web Services (AWS) division will be entering the quantum business via cloud services, research, and consulting services. The quantum computing cloud service is called Amazon Braket and provide access to quantum computers from D-Wave, IonQ, and Rigetti, with more to be added in the future. It will be a fully managed service that will include Amazon’s own development environment that will interface to these other systems. This could provide end users with the potential ability to use a common front end for programming their problem and then try it out on each of the three quantum computers. In addition, end users will also have access to AWS’s extensive classical computing capability for hybrid classical/quantum algorithms.

IonQ is an interesting partner because they also announced a similar arrangement with Microsoft last month. In addition, Amazon is an investor in IonQ through their venture capital group and IonQ’s CEO, Peter Chapman, was the Engineering Director at Amazon Prime before he joined IonQ last May. D-Wave and Rigetti also provide cloud services on their own, but certainly do not have the extensive customer base that AWS possesses.

The second thrust will be to establish the AWS Center for Quantum Computing which will be located at Caltech in Pasadena, California. At this center, researchers and engineers from Amazon, Caltech and other academic institutions will research the development of more powerful quantum computing hardware and work to identify novel quantum applications.

Finally, Amazon will establish a consulting capability called the Amazon Quantum Solutions Lab. The capability will include quantum computing experts from Amazon along with additional members of the Amazon Partner Network (APN) partners including initially 1Qbit, Rahko, Rigetti, QCWare, QSimulate, Xanadu, and Zapata. This lab that will provide hands-on educational workshops and help customers develop their own strategy for quantum computing, build internal expertise, and eventually deploy quantum applications.

For more information about these new efforts, you can view Amazon’s announcement press release, press releases from D-Wave, IonQ, and Rigetti, announcing their partnerships with Google, and you can visit the Amazon Braket web site. For those who already possess an AWS account number, they can apply here to be considered for acceptance into the Amazon Braket Preview program.

December 3, 2019

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Cloud Platform Hardware Partners

With the recent announcements from IBM, Microsoft and Amazon that they will be supporting multiple different hardware vendors and technologies on their platforms, it is getting complicated to know who is partnering with whom. So we have created a table showing Cloud/Hardware partners in a manner similar to our other table which shows Software Partners. The table reflects those partners and offerings that are either in operating now or have been announced. We will update this table when additional public announcements are made.

Updated December 2, 2019

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The Unitary Fund Expands Into Its Next Phase with Additional Support

The Unitary Fund was established in 2018 to provide small micro-grants of $2,000 to fund people who wanted to explore open source quantum software projects. Since then it has funded eleven different projects in ten countries resulting in several technical papers being published and has helped to launch one new quantum startup.

They have just posted a new article on Medium in which the Unitary Fund announces that it is entering a new phase with funding from IBM, Google X, Microsoft, Rigetti, Xanadu, and Zapata Computing.  The new funding will allow the standard micro-grant size to double to $4,000 and allow the Unitary Fund to support up to 40 new projects.  In addition, the expanded program may allow funding of a broader range of projects and potentially include projects related to quantum hardware, quantum sensors, and other things that are not within the realm of open source quantum software.

Also in the announcement, the Unitary Fund announced that it has formed an internal research program which they call Unitary Labs. This effort will perform quantum research along with partners from universities and government labs.  One such project is the TEAM (Tough Errors are No Match) project being led by the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins University which aims to improve the toolkit available for quantum compilers so that quantum hardware can be more robust to noisy components.  

For more you can view the Medium article announcing the expanded Unitary Fund here and to see more details about their funding process and to apply for one of the micro-grants you can visit https://unitary.fund/.

November 21, 2019

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