• At the Cutting Edge of Quantum Computing Research

    February 12, 2018

    On today’s podcast episode of “The Interview” with The Next Platform, we focus on some of the recent quantum computing developments out of Oak Ridge National Lab’s Quantum Computing Institute with the center’s director, Dr. Travis Humble.

    Regular readers will recall previous work Humble has done on the quantum simulator, as well as other lab and Quantum Insitute efforts on creating hybrid quantum and neuromorphic supercomputers and building software frameworks to support quantum interfacing. In our discussion we check in on progress along all of these fronts, including a more detailed conversation about the XACC programming framework for …

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  • What It Takes to Build a Quantum Computing Startup

    February 2, 2018

    If you thought the up-front costs and risks were high for a silicon startup, consider the economics of building a full-stack quantum computing company from the ground-up—and at a time when the applications are described in terms of their potential and the algorithms still in primitive stages.

    Quantum computing company, D-Wave managed to bootstrap its annealing-based approach and secure early big name customers with a total of $200 million over the years but as we have seen with a range of use cases, they have been able to put at least some funds back in investor pockets with system sales …

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  • Quantum Computing Enters 2018 Like It Is 1968

    January 10, 2018 Paul Teich

    The quantum computing competitive landscape continues to heat up in early 2018. But today’s quantum computing landscape looks a lot like the semiconductor landscape 50 years ago.

    The silicon-based integrated circuit (IC) entered its “medium-scale” integration phase in 1968. Transistor counts ballooned from ten transistors on a chip to hundreds of transistors on a chip within a few short years. After a while, there were thousands of transistors on a chip, then tens of thousands, and now we have, fifty years later, tens of billions.

    Quantum computing is a practical application of quantum physics using individual subatomic particles chilled to …

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  • Oak Ridge Lab’s Quantum Simulator Pulls HPC Future Closer

    November 15, 2017

    Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been investing heavily in quantum computing across the board. From testing new devices, programming models, and figuring out workflows that combine classical bits with qubits, this is where the DoE quantum investment seems to be centered.

    Teams at Oak Ridge have access to the range of available quantum hardware devices—something that is now possible without having to own the difficult-to-manage quantum computer on site. IBM’s Q processor is available through a web interface, as is D-Wave’s technology, which means researchers at ORNL can test their quantum applications on actual hardware. As we just …

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  • D-Wave Makes Quantum Leap with Reverse Annealing

    November 14, 2017

    The art and science of quantum annealing to arrive at a best of all worlds answer to difficult questions has been well understood for years (even if implementing it as a computational device took time). But that area is now being turned on its head—all for the sake of achieving more nuanced results that balance the best of quantum and classical algorithms.

    This new approach to quantum computing is called reverse annealing, something that has been on the research wish-list at Google and elsewhere, but is now a reality on the newest D-Wave 2000Q (2048 qubit) hardware. The company described …

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  • IBM Bolsters Quantum Capability, Emphasizes Device Differentiation

    November 10, 2017

    Much of the quantum computing hype of the last few years has centered on D-Wave, which has installed a number of functional systems and is hard at work making quantum programming more practical.

    Smaller companies like Rigetti Computing are gaining traction as well, but all the while, in the background, IBM has been steadily furthering quantum computing work that kicked off at IBM Research in the mid-1970s with the introduction of the quantum information concept by Charlie Bennett.

    Since those early days, IBM has hit some important milestones on the road to quantum computing, including demonstrating the first quantum …

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  • One Step Closer to Easier Quantum Programming

    October 27, 2017

    For quantum computing to make the leap from theory and slim early use cases to broader adoption, a programmability jump is required. Some of the first hurdles have been knocked over in the last few weeks with new compiler and API-based development efforts that abstract some of the complex physics required for both qubit and gate-based approaches to quantum devices.

    The more public recent effort was the open source publication of OpenFermion, a quantum compiler based on work at Google and quantum startup, Rigetti Computing, that is focused on applications in quantum chemistry and materials science. OpenFermion is …

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  • Rambus, Microsoft Put DRAM Into Deep Freeze To Boost Performance

    May 6, 2017

    Energy efficiency and operating costs for systems are as important as raw performance in today’s datacenters. Everyone from the largest hyperscalers and high performance computing centers to large enterprises that are sometimes like them are trying squeeze as much performance as they can from their infrastructure while reining in power consumption and the costs associated with keeping it all from overheating.

    Throw in the slowing down of Moore’s Law and new emerging workloads like data analytics and machine learning, and the challenge to these organizations becomes apparent.

    In response, organizations on the cutting edge have embraced accelerators like GPUs and …

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  • China Making Swift, Competitive Quantum Computing Gains

    March 27, 2017 Jeffrey Burt

    Chinese officials have made no secret out of their desire to become the world’s dominant player in the technology industry. As we’ve written about before at The Next Platform, China has accelerated its investments in IT R&D over the past several years, spending tens of billions of dollars to rapidly expand the capabilities of its own technology companies to better compete with their American counterparts, while at the same time forcing U.S. tech vendors to clear various hurdles in their efforts to access the fast-growing China market.

    This is being driven by a combination of China’s desire to increase …

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  • Strong FBI Ties for Next Generation Quantum Computer

    March 13, 2017

    It is a good time to be the maker of a machine that excels in large-scale optimization problems for cybersecurity and defense. And it is even better to be the only maker of such a machine at a time when the need for a post-Moore’s Law system is in high demand.

    We have already described the U.S. Department of Energy’s drive to place a novel architecture at the heart of one of the future exascale supercomputers, and we have also explored the range of options that might fall under that novel processing umbrella. From neuromorphic chips, deep learning PIM-based architectures, …

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