Quantum Industry News – PostQuantum – Marin Ivezic

26 Jan 2022 - For a decade, silicon spin qubits have been quantum computing's most tantalizing "not yet." The pitch was always compelling: qubits built from the same material that powers every smartphone and data centre on earth, manufactured using processes the semiconductor industry has spent half a century perfecting. But the performance gap was real. While superconducting circuits and ...

Zurich-based startup Terra Quantum raised a hefty $60 million in Series A financing to build out its “quantum-as-a-service” platform. Announced in January 2022, this was one of Europe’s largest quantum tech funding rounds at the time. Terra Quantum offers a hybrid quantum computing platform - combining classical computing power with quantum algorithms - and is even developing its own quantum hardware. The ...

IBM has announced Eagle, a 127-qubit superconducting quantum processor – the world’s first quantum chip to surpass 100 qubits​. Unveiled at the IBM Quantum Summit in late 2021, Eagle marks a major milestone in quantum computing, nearly doubling the qubit count of IBM’s previous 65-qubit “Hummingbird” processor and overtaking the scale of rival devices like Google’s 53-qubit Sycamore​​. IBM’s researchers ...

A new preprint by Elie Gouzien and Nicolas Sangouard proposes an architectural trade: replace the “millions of qubits in one giant chip” model with a small quantum processor plus a very large multimode quantum memory. Under optimistic - but clearly stated - fault-tolerance assumptions, the authors estimate that factoring an RSA-2048 integer could be done in ~177 days with ~13,436 physical qubits in the processor, provided ...

Dutch quantum hardware startup QuantWare has announced the launch of commercially available superconducting quantum processing units (QPUs), aiming to make superconducting qubit hardware accessible “off the shelf” and on short lead times. The company says easier access to superconducting processors - an approach used in some of the field’s most mature quantum computing platforms - could help smaller labs and ...

A major corporate development in July 2021 saw German tech group Rohde & Schwarz acquire Zurich Instruments, a Swiss test & measurement firm known for its quantum control electronics. Zurich Instruments, a spin-off from ETH Zurich, had become a leader in specialized instrumentation for quantum labs (like quantum computer control systems). The deal, completed on July 1, 2021, makes Zurich Instruments ...

A team of Chinese physicists has unveiled Zuchongzhi 2.0, a cutting-edge 66-qubit superconducting quantum computing prototype that pushes the frontiers of computational power. Announced by the CAS Center for Excellence in Quantum Information, this new quantum machine builds on its predecessor (Zuchongzhi 1.0) with more qubits and higher fidelity, achieving a milestone known as quantum computational advantage (or “quantum supremacy”) ...

In May 2021, scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) unveiled Zuchongzhi 1.0, a 62-qubit programmable superconducting quantum computer that set a new benchmark in the quantum computing race. Named after a 5th-century Chinese mathematician, Zuchongzhi 1.0 contains the largest number of superconducting qubits ever assembled in a single processor so far​ ...

The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) has recently published a report titled "Post-Quantum Cryptography: Current State and Quantum Mitigation." This study offers a detailed overview of the current progress in the standardization process of Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), crucial for safeguarding digital communications against the emerging threat posed by quantum computing capabilities. The report categorizes and explores the five principal ...

May 2021 - ETH Zurich and the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) opened a new joint Quantum Computing Hub dedicated to developing next-generation quantum computers. Backed by CHF 32 million from ETH, the center in canton Aargau brings together about 30 researchers under one roof. Uniquely, it houses two leading quantum hardware approaches side by side: superconducting circuits and trapped-ion technologies ...

An interesting paper was published on arXiv, the preprint server. Titled "How to factor 2048 bit RSA integers in 8 hours using 20 million noisy qubits," the paper by Craig Gidney and Martin Ekerå combines previous techniques from Shor (1994), Griffiths-Niu (1996), Zalka (2006), Fowler (2012), Ekerå-Håstad (2017), Ekerå (2017, 2018), Gidney-Fowler (2019), and Gidney (2019) to significantly reduce the ...

A team of Chinese scientists has announced a breakthrough in quantum computing with the development of Jiuzhang, a photonic quantum processor that achieved a major computational milestone. In experiments reported on December 3, 2020, Jiuzhang completed in 200 seconds a mathematical problem that researchers estimate would take a classical supercomputer on the order of 2.5 billion years to solve​ ...

Vancouver-area company D-Wave Systems - the world’s first commercial quantum computing firm - launched its Advantage quantum annealer, boasting over 5,000 qubits and a radically expanded 15-way qubit connectivity. This machine marked a leap from its previous 2,000-qubit system and demonstrated that D-Wave’s unique quantum annealing architecture can scale in qubit count and complexity. CEO Alan Baratz highlighted that despite ...

The Swiss Science Council released a landmark white paper on quantum technologies, outlining a national strategy to capitalize on Switzerland’s strengths in quantum computing, communication, sensing, and cryptography. This roadmap calls for greater coordination and investment across government, academia, and industry to ensure the country remains at the forefront of the “second quantum revolution.” Key focus areas include scaling up ...

In late 2019, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) quietly reached a milestone in cybersecurity: it approved a new standard that could redefine how we secure data in the coming quantum era. The standard, known as ITU-T Recommendation Y.3800, is an “Overview on networks supporting Quantum Key Distribution” - essentially a blueprint for building networks that use the strange laws of ...

Google announced that its 53-qubit quantum processor, Sycamore, has achieved a long-anticipated milestone known as “quantum supremacy.” In a paper published in Nature, the Google AI Quantum team reported that Sycamore performed a specific computation in approximately 200 seconds – a task they estimated would take the world’s fastest classical supercomputer at least 10,000 years to complete​ ...

On December 21, 2018, the United States solidified its commitment to quantum technology advancement by enacting the H.R.6227 - National Quantum Initiative Act. Passed with near-unanimous support from both houses of Congress, this landmark legislation outlines a comprehensive 10-year plan aimed at maintaining and enhancing U.S. leadership in quantum technologies. Key Provisions of the National Quantum Initiative Act: Establishment of ...

On October 29, 2018, following the Quantum Manifesto published in 2016, the European Commission officially kicked off its ambitious Quantum Technologies Flagship initiative, marking a significant step in Europe's commitment to quantum technology development. The initiative, backed by the European Commission, allocates over €1 billion in funding to support more than 5,000 of Europe's leading quantum technology researchers over the ...