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As the global quantum computing market is forecast to reach over EUR 50 billion by 2030, Finnish companies have started cooperation to capture the business opportunities emerging from advances in quantum technologies.

OP Financial Group, Accenture, CSC IT Center for Science, and globally recognized quantum technology companies Bluefors and IQM are the first to join BusinessQ, a VTT-coordinated network to support businesses in the adoption and development of quantum technologies and solutions. The companies will work together to build a business roadmap for Finland around the opportunities of quantum technologies.

Bringing together companies and organisations with quantum expertise, as well as potential end-users, BusinessQ works to position Finnish businesses to the global forefront of adapting new quantum-enabled technologies.

Developments in quantum technologies will create new opportunities for Finnish companies. At VTT, we have decades of experience in turning emerging technologies into viable business, and now we want to foster an active community and support Finnish industries and society in capturing the benefits of quantum technologies early on, says VTTsErja Turunen, Executive Vice President, Digital technologies.

BusinessQ wants to grow and attract new companies from different industries to join the network. Cooperation and dialogue can benefit both companies and the quantum research community as it provides a better understanding of the different industry challenges that quantum-based technologies could tackle in the future.

Discussions with our first BusinessQ partners have shown that Finnish businesses have curiosity, ambition, and an open approach to quantum technologies. We are eager to welcome more companies from different industries and want to build an active business community around the opportunities of quantum technologies,explainsHimadri MajumdarManager of Quantum Programmes at VTT.

Finland also has an active research community that fosters innovation around quantum technologies. In April 2021, Aalto University, Helsinki University, and VTT announced InstituteQ: The Finnish Quantum Institute aims at raising the readiness of Finnish society for the disruptive potential and implications quantum technologies will have for society and the economy at large. In this context, it coordinates operations that foster collaboration in research, education, innovation and infrastructure in the field of quantum technologies. BusinessQs activities share the mission of InstituteQ in strengthening Finlands growing quantum ecosystem. VTT also hosts Finlands first quantum computer that is being built in Espoo in partnership with IQM.

This article was first published on September 22 by CSC.

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CSC-IT: Finnish businesses start cooperation to capture the benefits of quantum technologies - Science Business

The system will let researchers perform calculations and solve problems that current supercomputers cannot handle.

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Backed by a multi-million-dollar federal grant, a research team from three major universities will soon start working on a pioneering supercomputing system that allows scientists and engineers to align its processors, accelerators, memory and other hardware components to best serve their needs.

This innovative system will operate increasingly complex levels of software while sidestepping the hardware bottlenecks that often hinder high-level computations. This system will let researchers perform calculations and solve problems that current supercomputers cannot handle.

On Oct. 1, 2021, researchers from Texas A&M University, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) will begin collaborating on a prototype for what they call the Accelerating Computing for Emerging Sciences (ACES) system.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) will provide $5 million for ACESs development and an additional $1 million per year over five years to pay for system operation and support.

Texas A&M Interim Vice President for Research Jack Baldaulf expressed gratitude to the NSF for its substantial investment in the ACES project. We are thankful to NSF for the opportunity to lead such an important initiative and to our Texas A&M HPRC staff and collaborators at UT Austin and UIUC for making this a successful effort, Baldauf said. Computational science is critical to our national needs and the ACES platform will not only advance research but also help educate the future workforce in this area.

The teams goal is to develop an all-inclusive system that will serve researchers across a wide range of scholarly disciplines and computer skills, according to Honggao Liu, executive director of Texas A&Ms High Performance Research Computing (HPRC) and the projects principal investigator.

These disciplines include artificial intelligence and machine learning, cybersecurity, health population informatics, genomics and bioinformatics, human and agricultural life sciences, oil-and-gas simulations, new-materials design, climate modeling, molecular dynamics, quantum-computing architectures, imaging, smart and connected societies, geosciences and quantum chemistry.

The ACES system will support the national research community through coordination systems supported by the NSF, Liu said. In this way, the ACES system will provide invaluable support to cutting-edge projects across a broad spectrum of research disciplines in the nation. ACES will also leverage HPRCs efforts that promote science and broaden participation in computing at the K-12, collegiate and professional levels to have a transformative impact nationally by focusing on training, education and outreach.

Researchers should think of ACES as a cyber-buffet, said Timothy M. Cockerill, director of user services, TACC at UT Austin, and a co-principal investigator on the ACES project. Theyll be able to essentially build the custom environment they require on a per job basis and not be constrained to the contents of a physical server node, Cockerill said.

ACES will open new avenues to scientific advancement, said Shaowen Wang, head of the Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science, professor at UIUC and a co-principal investigator on the ACES project. Exciting advances on many science frontiers will become possible by harnessing the hybrid computing resources and highly adaptable framework offered byACESto enable increasingly complex scientific workflows driven by geospatial big data and artificial intelligence, Wang said.

Also serving as co-principal investigators are Lisa M. Perez, associate director for advanced computing enablement, and Dhruva Chakravorty, associate director for user services and research, both from HPRC at Texas A&M.

Research that generates breakthrough discoveries will require highly advanced computer designs that can meet the challenge, Texas A&M Senior Associate Vice President for Research Costas N. Georghiades said. With the increasing complexity of computational problems in the big-data era we live in, it is no longer sufficient to use traditional supercomputers which rely only on optimizing the software, Georghiades said. The ACES system will also be able to adapt hardware resources on the fly to tackle complex computational tasks more efficiently. Texas A&M is proud to lead this effort in collaboration with our university partners at UT Austin and Illinois.

Technical description

ACES leverages an innovative composable framework via PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) Gen5 on Intels upcoming Sapphire Rapid (SPR) processors to offer a rich accelerator testbed consisting of Intel Ponte Vecchio (PVC) GPUs (Graphics Processing Units), Intel FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays), NEC Vector Engines, NextSilicon co-processors and Graphcore IPUs (Intelligence Processing Units).

The accelerators are coupled with Intel Optane memory and DDN Lustre storage interconnected with Mellanox NDR 400Gbps InfiniBand to support workflows that benefit from optimized devices. ACES will allow applications and workflows to dynamically integrate the different accelerators, memory and in-network computing protocols to glean new insights by rapidly processing large volumes of data and provide researchers with a unique platform to produce complex hybrid programming models for effectively supporting calculations that were not feasible before.

About Research at Texas A&M University: As one of the worlds leading research institutions, Texas A&M is at the forefront in making significant contributions to scholarship and discovery, including science and technology. Research conducted at Texas A&M generated annual expenditures of more than $1.131 billion in fiscal year 2020. Texas A&M ranked in the top 25 of the most recent National Science Foundation Higher Education Research and Development survey based on expenditures of more than $952 million in fiscal year 2019. Texas A&Ms research creates new knowledge that provides basic, fundamental, and applied contributions resulting in economic benefits to the state, nation, and world. research.tamu.edu

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Trailblazing Supercomputer Will Enable Scientists And Engineers To Optimize Its Hardware To Support Groundbreaking Research - Texas A&M University...

Quantum computers are machines that use the properties of quantum physics to store data and perform computations. This can be extremely advantageous for certain tasks where they could vastly outperform even our best supercomputers.

Classical computers, which include smartphones and laptops, encode information in binary bits that can either be 0s or 1s. In a quantum computer, the basic unit of memory is a quantum bit or qubit.

Qubits are made using physical systems, such as the spin of an electron or the orientation of a photon. These systems can be in many different arrangements all at once, a property known as quantum superposition. Qubits can also be inextricably linked together using a phenomenon called quantum entanglement. The result is that a series of qubits can represent different things simultaneously.

For instance, eight bits is enough for a classical computer to represent any number between 0 and 255. But eight qubits is enough for a quantum computer to represent every number between 0 and 255 at the same time. A few hundred entangled qubits would be enough to represent more numbers than there are atoms in the universe.

This is where quantum computers get their edge over classical ones. In situations where there are a large number of possible combinations, quantum computers can consider them simultaneously. Examples include trying to find the prime factors of a very large number or the best route between two places.

However, there may also be plenty of situations where classical computers will still outperform quantum ones. So the computers of the future may be a combination of both these types.

For now, quantum computers are highly sensitive: heat, electromagnetic fields and collisions with air molecules can cause a qubit to lose its quantum properties. This process, known as quantum decoherence, causes the system to crash, and it happens more quickly the more particles that are involved.

Quantum computers need to protect qubits from external interference, either by physically isolating them, keeping them cool or zapping them with carefully controlled pulses of energy. Additional qubits are needed to correct for errors that creep into the system.

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What is a quantum computer? | New Scientist

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A team of Australian and Canadian researchers have published a new study they say demonstrates a path towards scaling individual quantum bits (qubits) to a mini-quantum computer by using holes.

The Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies (FLEET) said the work indicates holes are the solution to operational speed/coherence trade-off.

"One way to make a quantum bit is to use the 'spin' of an electron, which can point either up or down. To make quantum computers as fast and power-efficient as possible we would like to operate them using only electric fields, which are applied using ordinary electrodes," FLEET said, alongside researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CQC2T) hosted by the University of New South Wales (UNSW), and participants from the University of British Columbia.

"Although spin does not ordinarily 'talk' to electric fields, in some materials spins can interact with electric fields indirectly, and these are some of the hottest materials currently studied in quantum computing."

The group explained the interaction that enables spins to talk to electric fields -- the spin-orbit interaction -- is traced back to Einstein's theory of relativity. They said the fear of quantum-computing researchers has been that when this interaction is strong, any gain in operation speed would be offset by a loss in coherence.

Read more:Quantum computing: A cheat sheet(TechRepublic)

"Essentially, how long we can preserve quantum information," FLEET said.

"If electrons start to talk to the electric fields we apply in the lab, this means they are also exposed to unwanted, fluctuating electric fields that exist in any material (generically called `noise') and those electrons' fragile quantum information would be destroyed," Associate Professor Dimi Culcer, who led the theoretical roadmap study, added.

"But our study has shown this fear is not justified."

Culcer said the team's theoretical studies show that a solution is reached by using holes, which can be thought of as the absence of an electron, behaving like positively-charged electrons.

"In this way, a quantum bit can be made robust against charge fluctuations stemming from the solid background," FLEET said.

"Moreover, the 'sweet spot' at which the qubit is least sensitive to such noise is also the point at which it can be operated the fastest."

"Our study predicts such a point exists in every quantum bit made of holes and provides a set of guidelines for experimentalists to reach these points in their labs," Culcer added.

Over in Japan, RIKEN and Fujitsu have jointly opened a new centre to promote joint research and development of foundational technologies to put superconducting quantum computers into practical use.

The RIKEN RQC-Fujitsu Collaboration Center will see the development of hardware and software technologies to realise a quantum computer with as many as 1,000 qubits and develop applications using a prototype quantum computer.

These efforts will be centred around RIKEN's ongoing work with advanced superconducting quantum computing technologies along with Fujitsu's computing technologies, the pair said.

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A 'hole' new world for the potential of mini quantum computers

Quantum computing has enormous potential in healthcare and has started to impact the industry in various ways.

For example, quantum computing offers the ability to track and diagnose disease. Using sensors, quantum technology has the ability to track the progress of cancer treatments and diagnose and monitor such degenerative diseases as multiple sclerosis.

The tech also can help modernize supply chains. Quantum technology can solve routing issues in real time using live data such as weather and traffic updates to help determine the most efficient method of delivery. This would have been particularly helpful during the pandemic since many states had issues with vaccine deliveries.

Elsewhere, quantum technology can impact early-stage drug discovery. Pharmaceuticals can take a decade or longer to bring to market. Quantum computing could lower the costs and reduce the time.

"In the simplest terms, quantum computing harnesses the mysterious properties of quantum mechanics to solve problems using individual atoms and subatomic particles," explained Scott Buchholz, emerging technology research director and government and public services CTO at Deloitte Consulting. "Quantum computers can be thought of as akin to supercomputers.

"However, today's supercomputers solve problems by performing trillions of math calculations very quickly to predict the weather, study air flow over wings, etc.," he continued. "Quantum computers work very differently they perform calculations all at once, limited by the number of qubitsof information that they currently hold."

Because of how differently they work, they aren't well suited for all problems, but they're a fit forcertain types of problems, such as molecular simulation, optimization and machine learning.

"What's important to note is that today's most advanced quantum computers still aren't especially powerful," Buchholz noted.

"Many calculations they currently can do can be performed on a laptop computer. However, if quantum computers continue to scale exponentially that is, the number of qubitsthey use for computation continues to double every year or so they will become dramatically more powerful in years to come.

"Because quantum computers can simulate atoms and other molecules much better than classical computers, researchers are investigating the future feasibility of doing drug discovery, target protein matching, calculating protein folding and more," he continued.

"That is, during the drug discovery process, they could be useful to dramatically reduce the time required to sort through existing databases of molecules to look for targets, identify potential new drugs with novel properties, identify potential new targets and more."

Researchers also are investigating the possibility of simulating or optimizing manufacturing processes for molecules, which potentially could help make scaling up manufacturing easier over time. While these advances won't eliminate the lengthy testing process, they may well accelerate the initial discovery process for interesting molecules.

"Quantum computing may also directly and indirectly lead to the ability to diagnose disease," Buchholz said. "Given future machines' ability to sort through complex problems quickly, they may be able to accelerate the processing of some of the techniques that are being developed today, say those that are designed to identify harmful genetic mutations or combinations.

"Indirectly, some of the materials that were investigated for quantum computers turned out to be better as sensors," he added. "Researchers are investigating quantum-based technologies to make smaller, more sensitive, lower-power sensors. In the future, these sensors and exotic materials may be combined in clever ways to help with disease identification and diagnosis."

Quantum computers will improve the ability to optimize logistics and routing, potentially easing bottlenecks in supply chains or identifying areas of improvement, Buchholz said.

Perhaps more interestingly, due to their ability to simulate molecular interactions, researchers are looking at their ability to optimize manufacturing processes to be quicker, use less energy and produce less waste, he added. That could lead to alternative manufacturing techniques that could simplify healthcare supply chains, he noted.

"Ultimately, the promise of quantum computers is to make some things faster like optimization and machine learning and make some things practical like large scale molecular and process simulation," he said.

"While the technology to solve the 'at scale' problems is still several years in the future, researchers currently are working hard today to put the foundations in place to tackle these problems as the hardware capacity of quantum computers advances.

"Should the hardware researchers achieve some of the sought after scalability breakthroughs, that promise could accelerate," he concluded.

Twitter:@SiwickiHealthITEmail the writer:bsiwicki@himss.orgHealthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.

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Deloitte's quantum computing leader on the technology's healthcare future - Healthcare IT News