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With much of the world steeped in data, where everything from refrigerators and watches to cars and surgical tools are connected to the internet via cloud computing, cryptography the basic building block of digital security has never been more important.

Encryption is one of the fundamental applications of cryptography, which converts information into what should be an unbreakable code, typically to prevent unauthorised access.

However, the rise of quantum computers, which are capable of breaking todays encryption protocols at a speed and scale beyond anything weve ever seen, according strategy advisory company the Future Today Institute, threatens to upend decades of encryption, posing unprecedented national security threats worldwide.

The lab in Abu Dhabi cannot be found anywhere else in the world

Dr Najwa Aaraj, Cryptography Research Centre

The UAE, which announced plans to build a quantum computer last month, has joined some of the worlds biggest economies in prioritising cryptography research the first country in the Middle East to do so.

The woman leading the UAEs cryptography plans says the level of research being conducted at the Abu Dhabi-based Technology Innovation Institute is unlike anywhere else in the world.

Speaking to The National, Dr Najwa Aaraj, who was appointed chief researcher at the Cryptography Research Centre at the Technology Innovation Institute last year, outlined her plans for the cutting-edge initiative that will give the UAE sovereignty over the future of its digital security.

I want the country to be known for this field, she said.

The Cryptography Research Centre is part of the Technology Innovation Institute in Masdar City, which focuses on applied research for Abu Dhabi government's Advanced Technology Research Council.

It is also one of the few centres of its kind to bring together theoretical and applied cryptographers from the public and private sector and from around the world.

Ms Aaraj, who got her PhD in information security from Princeton University in New Jersey, US, oversees the team of 50 and is actively hiring for about a dozen positions.

We assembled a team of professionals from across the global cryptography community to investigate the current and future challenges of digital society and to respond with practical solutions, Ms Aaraj said.

She said the qualities of the lab in Abu Dhabi cannot be found anywhere else in the world.

You get connected to the east, to the west, to the US, to Europe, and you can have really good collaboration.

"So at the end, the intellectual environment that I've had in Abu Dhabi and the UAE, I can confidently say, I haven't had it anywhere else, she said.

TII recently announced partnerships with Yale University in Connecticut, US, and a board of advisors from Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, the University of Toulouse and Computer Science at Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon in France, plusRuhr-University Bochum in Germany.

I still work with Princeton with my adviser on a few research topics, she added.

Last month, Ms Aarajs team introduced a software library to store algorithms capable of fighting off attacks in a post-quantum world.

Abu Dhabi's new library is a collection of algorithms to safeguard confidential data and information that aims to advance digital data security in the capital and the broader UAE.

TII's work focused on data confidentiality, integrity, authentication and privacy.

We have a very strong team here from Emirati talent and also global talent

Dr Najwa Aaraj

It was the second library of algorithms Ms Aarajs team has introduced. The first was the "national sovereign" crypto library, which is currently being integrated into digital infrastructure and multiple systems in the country.

Ms Aaraj said it is critical these algorithms, which can safeguard the UAE's data in sectors such as finance, defence and healthcare, are developed in-country and owned exclusively by the UAE.

Not having control over these data safeguards leaves countries vulnerable to an ever-increasing number of threats.

Abu Dhabi, which holds about 5.6 per cent of the worlds proven oil reserves, is positioning itself as a technology and industrial hub.

Earlier this month, Rashed Al Blooshi, undersecretary of Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development, said the emirate is focused on a number of non-oil sectors including industry, agriculture, tourism, health and technology to diversify its economy away from hydrocarbons.

Ms Aaraj is keen to support that mission, and confident she can deliver on growing the emirates technology sector.

We have a very strong team here from Emirati talent and also global talent. To actually be a hub and attract top experts in the field to come and work from here Im sure this will happen.

Countries like the US, France, the UK and China are pouring billions of dollars into preparing for a post-quantum future.

Governments are vying to attract talent and investment ahead of the first real-world quantum use cases, according to the Future Today Institute, which outlined national efforts.

The US passed the National Quantum Initiative Act in 2018, earmarking $1.2 billion for quantum research, and last year it rolled out five new quantum computing centres, including one at Brookhaven National Laboratory, in New York, to build new nuclear, chemical and physics applications.

Ahead of the curve is the UK, which launched its National Quantum Technologies Programme in 2013 and is now in its second phase, with $1.3bn in investment.

Germanys programme is funded at $2.4bn, according to the Future Today Institute.

In China, researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China, in Hefei, published a paper in the journal Science describing their quantum computer achieving speeds 10 billion times faster than Googles Sycamore quantum processor, which was the first to achieve quantum supremacy, in October 2019.

Physicists at Google said at the time that their 53-bit quantum computer calculated something that an ordinary computer even a very powerful one simply could not have completed.

Sycamore performed a challenging calculation in 200 seconds. On the worlds current fastest traditional computer, that same calculation would have taken 10,000 years.

In February 2021, researchers from Google and Canadian quantum computing company D-Wave Systems solved a real-world challenge 3 million times faster than a classical computer.

Sundar Pichai with one of Google's quantum computers in the Santa Barbara lab. A quantum computer can reduce a calculation that would ordinarily take years to minutes. By processing a lot more information faster, they can evaluate many outcomes simultaneously, thereby increasing their calculating power exponentially. AFP

Quantum computers are able to process multiple possibilities at once, solving problems at a much faster rate. AP

A component of Google's Quantum Computer in the Santa Barbara lab. Todays computers function using something called bits, which are arranged in a combination of ones and zeroes. Quantum computers use quantum bits, or "qubits", which mean they are capable of solving calculations a traditional computer could never answer.. Reuters

Quantum computers are as fragile as they are complex. They require an ultra-cold environment to operate of just above zero Kelvin a unit of temperature which is minus 273. This helps keep the environment stable, with less energy and therefore less chance of the qubits flipping between states.EPA

Sundar Pichai and Daniel Sank with one of Google's Quantum Computers in the Santa Barbara lab. In late 2019, Google announced it had achieved "quantum supremacy". This means that its quantum computer became the first to solve a calculation in less than four minutes that would have taken the worlds most powerful supercomputer 10,000 years to complete. Reuters

Quantum computing could help solve everything from the mundane, such as finding the most efficient route, to huge breakthroughs in science, including creating new cancer treatments or possibly even finding a cure for cancer.They may even one day answer questions about the origins of the universe and address mysteries of space and time. Image: AFP

Quantum computers will also able to sort through reams of data on complicated subjects like climate change to predict how it will progress. AFP

Excerpt from:
Meet the Abu Dhabi cryptographer keeping your personal data safe - The National

Quantum computers have been on my mind a lot lately. A friend who likes investing in tech, and who knows about my attempt to learn quantum mechanics, has been sending me articles on how quantum computers might help solve some of the biggest and most complex challenges we face as humans, as a Forbes commentator declared recently. My friend asks, What do you think, Mr. Science Writer? Are quantum computers really the next big thing?

Ive also had exchanges with two quantum-computing experts with distinct perspectives on the technologys prospects. One is computer scientist Scott Aaronson, who has, as I once put it, one of the highest intelligence/pretension ratios Ive ever encountered. Not to embarrass him further, but I see Aaronson as the conscience of quantum computing, someone who helps keep the field honest.

The other expert is physicist Terry Rudolph. He is a co-author, the R, of the PBR theorem, which, along with its better-known predecessor, Bells theorem, lays bare the peculiarities of quantum behavior. In 2011 Nature described the PBR Theorem as the most important general theorem relating to the foundations of quantum mechanics since Bells theorem was published in 1964. Rudolph is also the author of Q Is for Quantum and co-founder of the quantum-computing startup PsiQuantum. Aaronson and Rudolph are on friendly terms; they co-authored a paper in 2007, and Rudolph wrote about Q Is for Quantum on Aaronsons blog. In this column, Ill summarize their views and try to reach a coherent conclusion.

First, a little background. Quantum computers exploit superposition (a particle inhabits two or more mutually exclusive states at the same time) and entanglement (a special form of superposition, in which two or more particles influence each other in spooky ways) to do things that ordinary computers cant. A bit, the basic unit of information of a conventional computer, can be in one of two states, representing a one or zero. Quantum computers, in contrast, traffic in qubits, which are constructed out of superposed particles that embody numerous states simultaneously.

For decades, quantum computing has been little more than a hypothesis, or laboratory curiosity, as researchers wrestled with the technical complexities of maintaining superposition and entanglement for long enough to perform useful calculations. (Remember that as soon as you look at an electron or cat, its superposition vanishes.) Now, tech giants like IBM, Amazon, Microsoft and Google have invested in quantum computing, as have many smaller companies, 193 by one count. In March, the startup IonQ announced a $2 billion deal that would make it the first publicly traded firm dedicated to quantum computers.

The Wall Street Journal reports that IonQ plans to produce a device roughly the size of an Xbox videogame console by 2023. Quantum computing, the Journal states, could speed up calculations related to finance, drug and materials discovery, artificial intelligence and others, andcrack many of the defensesused to secure the internet. According to Business Insider, quantum machines could help us cure cancer, and even take steps to reverse climate change.

This is the sort of hype that bugs Scott Aaronson. He became a computer scientist because he believes in the potential of quantum computing and wants to help develop it. Hed love to see someone build a machine that proves the naysayers wrong. But he worries that researchers are making promises they cant keep. Last month, Aaronson fretted on his blog Shtetl-Optimized that the hype, which he has been countering for years, has gotten especially egregious lately.

Whats new, Aaronson wrote, is that millions of dollars are now potentially available to quantum computing researchers, along with equity, stock options, and whatever else causes ka-ching sound effects and bulging eyes with dollar signs. And in many cases, to have a shot at such riches, all an expert needs to do is profess optimism that quantum computing will have revolutionary, world-changing applications and have themsoon. Or at least, not object too strongly when others say that. Aaronson elaborated on his concerns in a two-hour discussion on the media platform Clubhouse. Below I summarize a few of his points.

Quantum-computing enthusiasts have declared that the technology will supercharge machine learning. It will revolutionize the simulation of complex phenomena in chemistry, neuroscience, medicine, economics and other fields. It will solve the traveling-salesman problem and other conundrums that resist solution by conventional computers. Its still not clear whether quantum computing will achieve these goals, Aaronson says, adding that optimists might be in for a rude awakening.

Popular accounts often imply that quantum computers, because superposition and entanglement allow them to carry out multiple computations at the same time, are simply faster versions of conventional computers. Those accounts are misleading, Aaronson says. Compared to conventional computers, quantum computers are unnatural devices that might be best suited to a relatively narrow range of applications, notably simulating systems dominated by quantum effects.

The ability of a quantum computer to surpass the fastest conventional machine is known as quantum supremacy, a phrase coined by physicist John Preskill in 2012. Demonstrating quantum supremacy is extremely difficult. Even in conventional computing, proving that your algorithm beats mine isnt straightforward. You must pick a task that represents a fair test and choose valid methods of measuring speed and accuracy. The outcomes of tests are also prone to misinterpretation and confirmation bias. Testing creates an enormous space for mischief, Aaronson says.

Moreover, the hardware and software of conventional computers keeps improving. By the time quantum computers are ready for the marketplace, they might lose potential customersif, for example, classical computers become powerful enough to simulate the quantum systems that chemists and materials scientists actually care about in real life, Aaronson says. Although quantum computers would retain their theoretical advantage, their practical impact would be less.

As quantum computing attracts more attention and funding, Aaronson says, researchers may mislead investors, government agencies, journalists, the public and, worst of all, themselves about their works potential. If researchers cant keep their promises, excitement might give way to doubt, disappointment and anger, Aaronson warns. The field might lose funding and talent and lapse into a quantum-computer winter like those that have plagued artificial intelligence.

Lots of other technologiesgenetic engineering, high-temperature superconductors, nanotechnology and fusion energy come to mindhave gone through phases of irrational exuberance. But something about quantum computing makes it especially prone to hype, Aaronson suggests, perhaps because quantum stands for something cool you shouldnt be able to understand.

And that brings me back to Terry Rudolph. In January, after reading about my struggle to understand the Schrdinger equation, Rudolph emailed me to suggest that I read Q Is for Quantum. The 153-page book explains quantum mechanics with a little arithmetic and algebra and lots of diagrams of black-and-white balls going in and out of boxes. Q Is for Quantum has given me more insight into quantum mechanics, and quantum computing, than anything Ive ever read.

Rudolph begins by outlining simple rules underlying conventional computing, which allow for the manipulation of bits. He then shifts to the odd rules of quantum computing, which stem from superposition and entanglement. He details how quantum computing can solve a specific problemone involving thieves stealing code-protected gold bars from a vault--much more readily than conventional computing. But he emphasizes, like Aaronson, that the technology has limits; it cannot compute the uncomputable.

After I read Q Is for Quantum, Rudolph patiently answered my questions about it. You can find our exchange (which assumes familiarity with the book) here. He also answered my questions about PsiQuantum, the firm he co-founded in 2016, which until recently has avoided publicity. Although he is wittily modest about his talents as a physicist (which adds to the charm of Q Is for Quantum), Rudolph is boosterish about PsiQuantum. He shares Aaronsons concerns about hype, and the difficulties of establishing quantum supremacy, but he says those concerns do not apply to PsiQuantum.

The company, he says, is closer than any other firm by a very large margin to building a useful quantum computer, one that solves an impactful problem that we would not have been able to solve otherwise (e.g., something from quantum chemistry which has real-world uses). He adds, Obviously, I have biases, and people will naturally discount my opinions. But I have spent a lot oftime quantitatively comparing what we are doing to others.

Rudolph and other experts contend that a useful quantum computer with robust error-correction will require millions of qubits. PsiQuantum, which constructs qubits out of light, expects by the middle of the decade to be building fault-tolerant quantum computers with fully manufactured components capable of scaling to a million or morequbits, Rudolph says. PsiQuantum has partnered with the semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries to achieve its goal. The machines will be room-sized, comparable to supercomputers or data centers. Most users will access the computers remotely.

Could PsiQuantum really be leading all the competition by a wide margin, as Rudolph claims? Can it really produce a commercially viable machine by 2025? I dont know. Quantum mechanics and quantum computing still baffle me. Im certainly not going to advise my friend or anyone else to invest in quantum computers. But I trust Rudolph, just as I trust Aaronson.

Way back in 1994, I wrote a brief report for Scientific American on quantum computers, noting that they could, in principle, perform tasks beyond the range of any classical device. Ive been intrigued by quantum computing ever since. If this technology gives scientists more powerful tools for simulating complex phenomena, and especially the quantum weirdness at the heart of things, maybe it will give science the jump start it badly needs. Who knows? I hope PsiQuantum helps quantum computing live up to the hype.

This is an opinion and analysis article.

Further Reading:

Will Artificial Intelligence Ever Live Up to Its Hype?

Is the Schrdinger Equation True?

Quantum Mechanics, the Chinese Room Experiment and the Limits of Understanding

Quantum Mechanics, the Mind-Body Problem and Negative Theology

For more ruminations on quantum mechanics, see my new bookPay Attention: Sex, Death, and Science and Tragedy and Telepathy, a chapter in my free online bookMind-Body Problems.

Continued here:
Will Quantum Computing Ever Live Up to Its Hype? - Scientific American

What youll learn:

A couple examples from history highlight our failure to secure the technology thats playing an increasingly larger role in both our personal lives and business. When computers were first connected to the internet, we had no idea of the Pandoras Box that was being opened, and cybersecurity wasnt even considered a thing. We failed to learn our lesson when mobile phones exploded onto the world and again with IoT still making fast to market more important than security. This has constantly left cybersecurity behind the 8 ball in the ongoing effort to secure data.

As we race to quantum computing, well see another, and perhaps the greatest, fundamental shift in the way computing is done. Quantum computers promise to deliver an increase in computing power that could spur enormous breakthroughs in disease research, understanding global climate, and delving into the origins of the universe.

As a result, the goal to further advance quantum-computing research has rightfully attracted a lot of attention and funding including $625 million from the U.S. government.1 However, it also will make many of our trusted security techniques inadequate, enabling encryption to be broken in minutes or hours instead of the thousands of years it currently takes.

Two important algorithms that serve as a basis for security of most commonly utilized public-key algorithms today will be broken by quantum computers:

As we prepare for a post-quantum world, we have another opportunity to get security right. The challenge of replacing the existing public-key cryptography in these applications with quantum-computer-resistant cryptography is going to be formidable.

Todays state-of-the-art quantum computers are so limited that while they can break toy examples, they dont endanger commercially used key sizes (such as specified in NIST SP800-57). However, most experts agree its only a matter of time until quantum computers evolve to the point of being able to break todays cryptography.

Cryptographers around the world have been studying the issue of post-quantum cryptography (PQC), and NIST has started a standardization process. However, even though were likely five to 10 years away from quantum computers becoming widely available, were approaching what can be described as the event horizon.

Data that has been cryptographically protected by quantum-broken algorithms up to Day 0 of the PQC deployment will likely need to remain secure for years decades in some cases after quantum computers are in use. This is known as Moscas Theorem (see figure).

%{[ data-embed-type="image" data-embed-id="6081ce0f2f5c1329008b4613" data-embed-element="span" data-embed-size="640w" data-embed-alt="Illustration of a bad outcome under Mosca’s Theorem, where a quantum adversary can break the security requirements for recorded messages. The adversary could, for example, break the encryption on a recorded message or alter a legal document and generate a fake signature indistinguishable from a valid signature." data-embed-src="https://img.electronicdesign.com/files/base/ebm/electronicdesign/image/2021/04/PQC_Event_Horizon_Figure_1.6081ce0f24f07.png?auto=format&fit=max&w=1440" data-embed-caption="Illustration of a bad outcome under Moscas Theorem, where a quantum adversary can break the security requirements for recorded messages. The adversary could, for example, break the encryption on a recorded message or alter a legal document and generate a fake signature indistinguishable from a valid signature." ]}%

Deploying any secure solution takes time. Given the inherent longer development time of chips compared to software, chip-based security becomes even more pressing. Throw in the added challenge that PQC depends on entirely new algorithms, and our ability to protect against quantum computers will take many years to deploy. All this adds up to make PQC a moving target.

The good news is that, and I take heart in this, we seem to have learned from previous mistakes, and NISTs PQC standardization process is working. The effort has been underway for more than four years and has narrowed entrants from 69 to seven (four in the category of public-key encryption and three in the category of digital signatures) over three rounds.

However, in late January 2021, NIST started reevaluating a couple of the current finalists and is considering adding new entries as well as some of the candidates from the stand-by list. As mentioned previously, addressing PQC isnt an incremental step. Were learning as we go, which makes it difficult to know what you dont know.

The current finalists were heavily skewed toward a lattice-based scheme. What the potential new direction by NIST indicates is that as the community has continued studying the algorithms, lattice-based schemes may not be the holy grail we first had hoped.

Someone outside the industry may look at that as a failure, but I would argue thats an incorrect conclusion. Only by trial and error, facing failure and course correcting along the way, can we hope to develop effective PQC algorithms before quantum computers open another, potentially worse cybersecurity Pandoras box. If we fail to secure it, we risk more catastrophic security vulnerabilities than weve ever seen: Aggressors could cripple governments, economies, hospitals, and other critical infrastructure in a matter of hours.

While its old hat to say, Its time the world took notice of security and give it a seat at the table, the time to deliver on that sentiment is now.

Reference

1. Reuters, U.S. to spend $625 million in five quantum information research hubs

See the article here:
Are We Doomed to Repeat History? The Looming Quantum Computer Event Horizon - Electronic Design

When it comes to practical problems, including things such as the traveling salesman problem, a classic in optimization, the value of quantum is still to be decided, say Richard Moulds, left, head of Amazon's Braket quantum computing service, and Robert Liscouski, head of Quantum Computing Inc., which makes Qatalyst software to do optimization on both classical and quantum machines.

It's easy to imagine a problem for which, if one had a computer that magically leapt across steps of the computation, your life would be much better.

Say, for example, a computer that auto-magically searches through a vast space of possible solutions much faster than you can with a CPU or GPU.

That's the premise of quantum computing, and surprisingly, for all the hype, it's not clear if that premise is true.

"I don't think we've seen any evidence yet that a quantum machine can do anything that's commercially interesting faster or cheaper than a classical machine," Richard Moulds, head of Amazon Braket, the cloud giant's quantum computing service, said in an interview with ZDNet. "The industry is waiting for that to arrive."

It is the question of the "quantum advantage," the notion that the entangled quantum states in a quantum computer will perform better on a given workload than an electronic system.

"We haven't seen it yet," Robert Liscouski, CEO of Quantum Computing Inc, said of the quantum advantage, in the same Zoom interview with Moulds.

That aporia, the as-yet-unproven quantum advantage, is in fact the premise for a partnership announced this month, whereby QCI's Qatalyst software program will run as a cloud service on top of Braket.

QCI's corporate tag line is "ready-to-run quantum software," and the Qatalyst program is meant to dramatically simplify sending a computing task to the qubits of a quantum hardware machine, the quantum processing units, or QPUs, multiple instances of which are offered through Bracket, including D::Wave, IonQ, and Rigetti.

The idea is to get more people working with quantum machines precisely to find out what they might be good for.

"Our platform basically allows the democratization of quantum computing to extend to the user community," said Liscouski.

"If you look back on the quantum industry since it started, it's traditionally been very difficult to get access to quantum hardware," said Moulds, including some machines that are "totally unavailable unless you have a personal relationship with the the physicist that built it."

"We're trying to make it easy for everyone to have access to the same machinery; it shouldn't be those that have and those that have not, it should be everyone on the same flywheel," he said.

The spectrum of users who will be working with quantum comprise "two important communities" today, said Moulds, those that want to twiddle qubits at the hardware level, and those that want to spend time on particular problems in order to see if they actually gain any benefit when exposed to the quantum hardware.

"There's a lot of researchers focused on building better hardware, that is the defining force in this industry," said Moulds. "Those types of researchers need to be in the weeds, playing at the qubit level, tweaking the frequencies of the pulses sent to the chip inside the fridge."

On the other hand, "the other class of users is much more geared to Robert's view of the world: they don't really care how it gets done, they just want to understand how to program their problem so that it can be most easily solved."

That second class of users are "all about abstraction, all about getting away from the technology." As quantum evolves, "maybe it slides under so that customers don't even know it's there," mused Moulds.

When it comes to those practical problems, the value of quantum is still to be decided.

There has been academic work showing quantum can speed up tasks, but "that's not been applied to a problem that anybody cares about," said Moulds.

The entire quantum industry is "still finding its way to what applications are really useful," he said. "You tend to see this list of potential applications, a heralded era of quantum computing, but I don't think we really know," he said.

The Qatalyst software from QCI focuses on the kinds of problems that are of perennial interest, generally in the category of optimization, particularly constrained optimization, where a solution to a given loss function or objective function is made more complicated by having to narrow the solution to a bunch of variables that have a constraint of some sort enforced, such as bounded values.

"They are described at a high level as the traveling salesman problem, where you have multi-variate sort of outcomes," said Liscouski. "But it's supply-chain logistics, it's inventory management, it's scheduling, it's things that businesses do today that quantum can really accelerate the outcomes in the very near future."

Such problems are "a very important use case," said Moulds. Quantum computers are "potentially good at narrowing the field in problem spaces, searching through large potential combinations in a wide variety of optimization problems," he said.

However, "classical will probably give you the better result" at this time, said Liscouski.

One of the reasons quantum advantage is not yet certain is because the deep phenomena at the heart of the discipline, things such as entanglement, make the field much more complex than early digital computing.

"A lot of people draw the analogy between where we are and the emergence of the transistor," said Moulds.

"I think that's not true: this is not just a case of making the computers we have today smaller and faster and cheaper, we're not anywhere near that regime, that Moore's Law notion of just scaling these things up."

"There's fundamental scientific discoveries that have to be made to build machines that can tackle these sorts of problems on the grand scale that we've been talking about."

Beyond the machines' evolution, there is an evolution implicit for programmers. Quantum brings a fundamentally different approach to programming. "These are physics-based machines, they're not just computational engines that add ones and zeros together, it's not just a faster slide rule," said Moulds.

That different way of programming may, in fact, point the way to some near-term payoff for the Qatalyst software, and Braket. Both Liscouski and Moulds expressed enthusiasm for taking lessons learned from quantum and back-loading them into classical computers.

"Typically, access to quantum computing is through toolkits and resources that require some pretty sophisticated capabilities to program to ultimately get to some result that involves a quantum computer," observed Liscouski.

"With Braket, the platform provides both access to QPUs and classical computing at the same time, and the quantum techniques that we use in the platform will get results for both," said Liscouski.

"It isn't necessarily a black and white decision between quantum and classical," said Moulds. "There's an emerging area, particularly in the area of optimization, people use the term quantum-inspired approaches are used."

"What that means is, looking at the ways that quantum computers actually work and applying that as a new class of algorithms that run on classical machines," he said.

"So, there's a sort of a morphing going on," he said.

An advantage to working with QCI, said Moulds, is that "they bring domain expertise that we don't have," things such as the optimization expertise.

"We've coined the phrase, 'Build on Braket'," said Moulds. "We're trying to build a quantum platform, and we look to companies like QCI to bring domain expertise to use that platform and apply it to problems that customers have really got."

Also important is operational stability and reliability, said Moulds. For a first-tier Web service with tons of users, the priority for Amazon is "running a professional service, a platform that is reliable and secure and durable" on which companies can "build businesses and solve problems."

Although there are "experimental" aspects, he said, "this is not intended to be a best-effort showcase."

Although the quantum advantage is not certain, Moulds holds out the possibility someone working with the technology will find it, perhaps even someone working on Braket.

"The only way we can move this industry forward is by pulling the curtains apart and giving folks the chance to actually see what's real," he said.

"And, boy, the day we see a quantum computer doing something that is materially advantageous from a commercial point of view, you will not miss that moment, I guarantee."

Originally posted here:
Quantum: It's still not clear what its good for, but Amazon and QCI will help developers find out - ZDNet

After a year in which scientists raced to understand Covid-19 and to develop treatments and vaccines to stop its spread, Cleveland Clinic is partnering with IBM to use next-generation technologies to advance healthcare research and potentially prevent the next public health crisis.

The two organizations on Tuesday announced the creation of the "Discovery Accelerator," which will apply technologies such as quantum computing and artificial intelligence to pressing life sciences research questions. As part of the partnership, Cleveland Clinic will become the first private-sector institution to buy and operate an on-site IBM quantum computer, called the Q System One. Currently, such machines only exist in IBM labs and data centers.

Quantum computing is expected to expedite the rate of discovery and help tackle problems with which existing computers struggle.

The accelerator is part of Cleveland Clinic's new Global Center for Pathogen Research & Human Health, a facility introduced in January on the heels of a $500 million investment by the clinic, the state of Ohio and economic development nonprofit JobsOhio to spur innovation in the Cleveland area.

The new center is dedicated to researching and developing treatments for viruses and other disease-causing organisms. That will include some research on Covid-19, including why it causes ongoing symptoms (also called "long Covid") for some who have been infected.

"Covid-19 is an example" of how the center and its new technologies will be used, said Dr. Lara Jehi, chief research information officer at the Cleveland Clinic.

"But ... what we want is to prevent the next Covid-19," Jehi told CNN Business. "Or if it happens, to be ready for it so that we don't have to, as a country, put everything on hold and put all of our resources into just treating this emergency. We want to be proactive and not reactive."

Quantum computers process information in a fundamentally different way from regular computers, so they will be able to solve problems that today's computers can't. They can, for example, test multiple solutions to a problem at once, making it possible to come up with an answer in a fraction of the time it would take a different machine.

Applied to healthcare research, that capability is expected to be useful for modeling molecules and how they interact, which could accelerate the development of new pharmaceuticals. Quantum computers could also improve genetic sequencing to help with cancer research, and design more efficient, effective clinical trials for new drugs, Jehi said.

Ultimately, Cleveland Clinic and IBM expect that applying quantum and other advanced technologies to healthcare research will speed up the rate of discovery and product development. Currently, the average time from scientific discovery in a lab to getting a drug to a patient is around 17 years, according to the National Institutes of Health.

"We really need to accelerate," Jehi said. "What we learned with the Covid-19 pandemic is that we cannot afford, as a human race, to just drop everything and focus on one emergency at a time."

Part of the problem: It takes a long time to process and analyze the massive amount of data generated by healthcare, research and trials something that AI, quantum computing and high-performance computing (a more powerful version of traditional computing) can help with. Quantum computers do that by "simulating the world," said Dario Gil, director of IBM Research.

"Instead of conducting physical experiments, you're conducting them virtually, and because you're doing them virtually through computers, it's much faster," Gil said.

For IBM, the partnership represents an important proof point for commercial applications of quantum computing. IBM currently offers access to quantum computers via the cloud to 134 institutions, including Goldman Sachs and Daimler, but building a dedicated machine on-site for one organization is a big step forward.

"What we're seeing is the emergency of quantum as a new industry within the world of information technology and computing," Gil said. "What we're seeing here in the context of Cleveland Clinic is ... a partner that says, 'I want the entire capacity of a full quantum computer to be [dedicated] to my research mission."

The partnership also includes a training element that will help educate people on how to use quantum computing for research which is likely to further grow the ecosystem around the new technology.

Cleveland Clinic and IBM declined to detail the cost of the quantum system being installed on the clinic's campus, but representatives from both organizations called it a "significant investment." Quantum computers are complex machines to build and maintain because they must be stored at extremely cold temperatures (think: 200 times colder than outer space).

The Cleveland Clinic will start by using IBM's quantum computing cloud offering while waiting for its on-premises machine to be built, which is expected to take about a year. IBM plans to later install at the clinic a more advanced version of its quantum computer once it is developed in the coming years.

Jehi, the Cleveland Clinic research lead, acknowledged that quantum computing technology is still nascent, but said the organization wanted to get in on the ground floor.

"It naturally needs nurturing and growing so that we can figure out what are its applications in healthcare," Jehi said. "It was important to us that we design those applications and we learn them ourselves, rather than waiting for others to develop them."

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