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Researchers propose a simpler design for quantum computers
Credit: CC0 Public Domain Today’s quantum computers are complicated to build, difficult to scale up, and require temperatures colder than interstellar space to operate. These challenges have led researchers to explore the possibility of building quantum computers that work using photons—particles of light. Photons can easily carry information from one place to another, and photonic quantum computers can operate at room temperature, so this approach is promising. However, although people have successfully created individual quantum “logic gates” for photons, it’s challenging to construct large numbers of gates and connect them in a reliable fashion to perform complex calculations. Now, Stanford
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First quantum computer to pack 100 qubits enters crowded race
The innards of an IBM quantum computer show the tangle of cables used to control and read out its qubits.Credit: IBM IBM’s newest quantum-computing chip, revealed on 15 November, established a milestone of sorts: it packs in 127 quantum bits (qubits), making it the first such device to reach 3 digits. But the achievement is only one step in an aggressive agenda boosted by billions of dollars in investments across the industry. The ‘Eagle’ chip is a step towards IBM’s goal of creating a 433-qubit quantum processor next year, followed by one with 1,121 qubits, named Condor, by 2023.
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Two of World’s Biggest Quantum Computers Made in China
One way to minimize such delays is by cutting a path through the Internet, one that takes into account the traffic conditions up ahead. My company, Subspace, has built such a network using custom hardware and a proprietary fiber-optic backbone. And we’ve shown it doesn’t have to be complicated—users don’t have to do anything more complicated than logging onto a Web portal. Put together, Subspace has created a “weather map” for the Internet that can spot choppy or stormy parts of the network and work around them for better, faster real-time data movement. The online transformation occasioned by the
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A Quantum Leap for Quantum Computing
UC Riverside will lead collaborative effort at developing scalable quantum computers. The University of California, Riverside, has won a University of California Multicampus-National Lab Collaborative Research and Training Award of $3.75 million that will allow the campus to focus on enabling scalable quantum computing. Quantum computers are expected to greatly outperform the most powerful conventional computers on certain tasks, such as modeling complex chemical processes, finding large prime numbers, and designing new molecules that have applications in medicine. These computers store quantum information in the form of quantum bits, or qubits — quantum systems that can exist in two
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Future sparkles for diamond-based quantum technology
An artist’s impression of a diamond building block in a future photonic circuit. The red color emphasises the germanium vacancy centres emitting at the red spectral range and the ring illustrates the cavity. Image: ARC Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optics at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Marilyn Monroe famously sang that diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but they are also very popular with quantum scientists—with two new research breakthroughs poised to accelerate the development of synthetic diamond-based quantum technology, improve scalability, and dramatically reduce manufacturing costs. While silicon is traditionally used for computer and mobile phone hardware,
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PsiQuantum’s Previously Secret Q1 Photonic Quantum Computer With GlobalFoundries
A PsiQuantum 300 mm wafter built by GlobalFoundries GlobalFoundries It has been over a year since I wrote about PsiQuantum. Its bold prediction at that time was that it would build a million-qubit fault-tolerant photonic quantum computer within five years. PsiQuantum was founded in 2016 by British professor Jeremy O’Brien and three other academics, Terry Rudolph, Mark Thompson, and Pete Shadbolt. Like the origin of many quantum computer startups, the concept of PsiQuantum’s core technology was born in a university research lab, in this case at the University of Bristol. In 2009, O’Brien published a research paper that described how
