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Google is aiming to build a useful, error-corrected quantum computer by the end of the decade, the company explained in a blog post. The search giant hopes the technology will help solve a range of big problems like feeding the world and climate change to developing better medicines. To develop the technology, Google has unveiled a new Quantum AI campus in Santa Barbara containing a quantum data center, hardware research labs, and quantum processor chip fabrication facilities. It will spend billions developing the technology over the next decade, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The target announced at Google I/O on Tuesday comes a year and a half after Google said it had achieved quantum supremacy, a milestone where a quantum computer has performed a calculation that would be impossible on a traditional classical computer. Google says its quantum computer was able to perform a calculation in 200 seconds that would have taken 10,000 years or more on a traditional supercomputer. But competitors racing to build quantum computers of their own cast doubt on Googles claimed progress. Rather than taking 10,000 years, IBM argued at the time that a traditional supercomputer could actually perform the task in 2.5 days or less.

This extra processing power could be useful to simulate molecules, and hence nature, accurately, Google says. This might help us design better batteries, creating more carbon-efficient fertilizer, or develop more targeted medicines, because a quantum computer could run simulations before a company invests in building real-world prototypes. Google also expects quantum computing to have big benefits for AI development.

Despite claiming to have hit the quantum supremacy milestone, Google says it has a long way to go before such computers are useful. While current quantum computers are made up of less than 100 qubits, Google is targeting machine built with 1,000,000. Getting there is a multistage process. Google says it first needs to cut down on the errors qubits make, before it can think about building 1,000 physical qubits together into a single logical qubit. This will lay the groundwork for the quantum transistor, a building block of future quantum computers.

Despite the challenges ahead, Google is optimistic about its chances. We are at this inflection point, the scientist in charge of Googles Quantum AI program, Hartmut Neven, told the Wall Street Journal, We now have the important components in hand that make us confident. We know how to execute the road map. Googles eventually plans to offer quantum computing services over the cloud.

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Google wants to build a useful quantum computer by 2029 - The Verge

circa 1931: German-born physicist Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) standing beside a blackboard with ... [+] chalk-marked mathematical calculations written across it. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

40 years ago, Nobel Prize-winner Richard Feynman argued that nature isn't classical, dammit, and if you want to make a simulation of nature, you'd better make it quantum mechanical. This was later perceived as a rallying cry for developing a quantum computer, leading to todays rapid progress in the search for quantum supremacy. Heres a very short history of the evolution of quantum computing.

1905Albert Einstein explains the photoelectric effectshining light on certain materials can function to release electrons from the materialand suggests that light itself consists of individual quantum particles or photons.

1924The term quantum mechanics is first used in a paper by Max Born

1925Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and Pascual Jordan formulate matrix mechanics, the first conceptually autonomous and logically consistent formulation of quantum mechanics

1925 to 1927Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg develop the Copenhagen interpretation, one of the earliest interpretations of quantum mechanics which remains one of the most commonly taught

1930Paul Dirac publishes The Principles of Quantum Mechanics, a textbook that has become a standard reference book that is still used today

1935Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen publish a paper highlighting the counterintuitive nature of quantum superpositions and arguing that the description of physical reality provided by quantum mechanics is incomplete

1935Erwin Schrdinger, discussing quantum superposition with Albert Einstein and critiquing the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, develops a thought experiment in which a cat (forever known as Schrdingers cat) is simultaneously dead and alive; Schrdinger also coins the term quantum entanglement

1947Albert Einstein refers for the first time to quantum entanglement as spooky action at a distance in a letter to Max Born

1976Roman Stanisaw Ingarden of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toru, Poland, publishes one of the first attempts at creating a quantum information theory

1980Paul Benioff of the Argonne National Laboratory publishes a paper describing a quantum mechanical model of a Turing machine or a classical computer, the first to demonstrate the possibility of quantum computing

1981In a keynote speech titled Simulating Physics with Computers, Richard Feynman of the California Institute of Technology argues that a quantum computer had the potential to simulate physical phenomena that a classical computer could not simulate

1985David Deutsch of the University of Oxford formulates a description for a quantum Turing machine

1992The DeutschJozsa algorithm is one of the first examples of a quantum algorithm that is exponentially faster than any possible deterministic classical algorithm

1993The first paper describing the idea of quantum teleportation is published

1994Peter Shor of Bell Laboratories develops a quantum algorithm for factoring integers that has the potential to decrypt RSA-encrypted communications, a widely-used method for securing data transmissions

1994The National Institute of Standards and Technology organizes the first US government-sponsored conference on quantum computing

1996Lov Grover of Bell Laboratories invents the quantum database search algorithm

1998First demonstration of quantum error correction; first proof that a certain subclass of quantum computations can be efficiently emulated with classical computers

1999Yasunobu Nakamura of the University of Tokyo and Jaw-Shen Tsai of Tokyo University of Science demonstrate that a superconducting circuit can be used as a qubit

2002The first version of the Quantum Computation Roadmap, a living document involving key quantum computing researchers, is published

2004First five-photon entanglement demonstrated by Jian-Wei Pan's group at the University of Science and Technology in China

2011The first commercially available quantum computer is offered by D-Wave Systems

2012 1QB Information Technologies (1QBit), the first dedicated quantum computing software company, is founded

2014Physicists at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, teleport information between two quantum bits separated by about 10 feet with zero percent error rate

2017 Chinese researchers report the first quantum teleportation of independent single-photon qubits from a ground observatory to a low Earth orbit satellite with a distance of up to 1400 km

2018The National Quantum Initiative Act is signed into law by President Donald Trump, establishing the goals and priorities for a 10-year plan to accelerate the development of quantum information science and technology applications in the United States

2019Google claims to have reached quantum supremacy by performing a series of operations in 200 seconds that would take a supercomputer about 10,000 years to complete; IBM responds by suggesting it could take 2.5 days instead of 10,000 years, highlighting techniques a supercomputer may use to maximize computing speed

The race for quantum supremacy is on, to being able to demonstrate a practical quantum device that can solve a problem that no classical computer can solve in any feasible amount of time. Speedand sustainabilityhas always been the measure of the jump to the next stage of computing.

In 1944, Richard Feynman, then a junior staff member at Los Alamos, organized a contest between human computers and the Los Alamos IBM facility, with both performing a calculation for the plutonium bomb. For two days, the human computers kept up with the machines. But on the third day, recalled an observer, the punched-card machine operation began to move decisively ahead, as the people performing the hand computing could not sustain their initial fast pace, while the machines did not tire and continued at their steady pace (seeWhen Computers Were Human, by David Alan Greer).

Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman stands in front of a blackboard strewn with notation ... [+] in his lab in Los Angeles, Californina. (Photo by Kevin Fleming/Corbis via Getty Images)

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27 Milestones In The History Of Quantum Computing - Forbes

20 May

Qutech and Intel jointly designed a qubit-controlling chip destined to solve the quantum computers wiring bottleneck. Currently, each qubit in a quantum computer is addressed individually, by a single wire. This stands in the way of a scalable quantum computer since millions of qubits would require millions of wires, explains lead investigator Lieven Vandersypen of Qutech. The solution: taking the control unit inside the cryogenic vessel, where the qubits reside.

Researchers and engineers from Qutech and Intel, therefore, designed a control chip that can withstand the extreme cold. Named Horse Ridge after the coldest place in Oregon, the CMOS IC is based on Intels 22nm low-power FinFET technology. As electronic devices operate very differently at cryogenic temperatures, we used special techniques in the chip design both to ensure the right chip operation and to drive the qubits with high accuracy, says co-lead investigator Edoardo Charbon.

Ultimately, the controller chip and the qubits can be integrated on the same die (as theyre all fabricated in silicon) or package, thus further relieving the wiring bottleneck.

To assess the quality of the Horse Ridge chip, it was compared to a classical room-temperature controller. It turns out the gate fidelity of the system is very high (99.7 percent) and limited not by the controller but by the qubits themselves. Next, the controllers programmability was showcased using the Deutsch-Jozsa quantum algorithm, which is one of the simplest algorithms thats much more efficient on a quantum computer than on a traditional computer. This demonstrated the ability to program the control chip with arbitrary sequences of operations and opens the way to on-chip implementation and a truly scalable quantum computer.

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Qutech and Intel cut the quantum computer's wires Bits&Chips - Bits&Chips

In their study reported in Nature, Ni and her team set out to identify all the possible energy state outcomes, from start to finish, of a reaction between two potassium and rubidium moleculesa more complex reaction than had been studied in the quantum realm. Thats no easy feat: At its most fundamental level, a reaction between four molecules has a massive number of dimensions (the electrons spinning around each atom, for example, could be in an almost-infinite number of locations simultaneously). That very high dimensionality makes calculating all the possible reaction trajectories impossible with current technology.

Calculating exactly how energy redistributes during a reaction between four atoms is beyond the power of todays best computers, Ni said. A quantum computer might be the only tool that could one day achieve such a complex calculation.

In the meantime, calculating the impossible requires a few well-reasoned assumptions and approximations (picking one location for one of those electrons, for example) and specialized techniques that grant Ni and her team ultimate control over their reaction.

One such technique was another recent Ni lab discovery: She and her team exploited a reliable feature of molecules their highly stable nuclear spin to control the quantum state of the reacting molecules all the way through to the product, work they chronicled in a recent study published in Nature Chemistry. They also discovered a way to detect products from a single collision reaction event, a difficult feat when 10,000 molecules could be reacting simultaneously. With these two novel methods, the team could identify the unique spectrum and quantum state of each product molecule, the kind of precise control necessary to measure all 57 pathways their potassium rubidium reaction could take.

Over several months during the COVID-19 pandemic, the team ran experiments to collect data on each of those 57 possible reaction channels, repeating each channel once every minute for several days before moving on to the next. Luckily, once the experiment was set up, it could be run remotely: Lab members could stay home, keeping the lab re-occupancy at COVID-19 standards, while the system churned on.

The test, said Matthew Nichols, a postdoctoral scholar in the Ni lab and an author on both papers, indicates good agreement between the measurement and the model for a subset containing 50 state-pairs but reveals significant deviations in several state-pairs.

In other words, their experimental data confirmed that previous predictions based on statistical theory (one far less complex than Schrdingers equation) are accurate mostly. Using their data, the team could measure the probability that their chemical reaction would take each of the 57 reaction channels. Then, they compared their percentages with the statistical model. Only seven of the 57 showed a significant enough divergence to challenge the theory.

We have data that pushes this frontier, Ni said. To explain the seven deviating channels, we need to calculate Schrdingers equation, which is still impossible. So now, the theory has to catch up and propose new ways to efficiently perform such exact quantum calculations.

Next, Ni and her team plan to scale back their experiment and analyze a reaction between only three atoms (one molecule is made of two atoms, which is then forced to react with a single atom). In theory, this reaction, which has far fewer dimensions than a four-atom reaction, should be easier to calculate and study in the quantum realm. Yet, already, the team has discovered something strange: The intermediate phase of the reaction lives on for many orders of magnitude longer than the theory predicts.

There is already mystery, Ni said. Its up to the theorists now.

This work was supported by the Department of Energy, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellowship in Chemical Sciences, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

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Researchers design new experiments to map and test the quantum realm - Harvard Gazette

CLEVELAND -- The Cleveland Clinics partnership with IBM to use quantum computing for medical research brings to mind the most unfortunate instance of bad timing in the history of Cleveland: the 1967 merger of Case Institute of Technology with Western Reserve University just when the computer age was coming to life.

The merger squelched Cases opportunity to be among the leaders in the most revolutionary technology ever (and to benefit Cleveland with computer-related jobs). Might the arrival of quantum computing mean fresh opportunity?

At the time of the merger, Cases Department of Computer Engineering and Science had a good chance to be at the forefront. But capitalizing on that required support from senior administrators of the new Case Western Reserve University administrators who could not be focused on technology to the degree that Case, on its own, had been. In the new world of CWRU, technology was one of many fields.

A vision for the merged institutions prepared by a prominent commission gave only a brief mention of computing either as a current or potential strength of the new institution or as a challenge or opportunity to be addressed, according to Richard E. Baznik in Beyond the Fence: A Social History of Case Western Reserve University. The goose with golden innards wasnt even recognized, let alone encouraged to lay eggs.

Further, the merger created the worst possible institutional environment for computer advocates. Not only did administrators have to contend with issues of who might lose their job because of consolidation and who would have which power (particularly over budget), they also had to manage the challenge that all universities were facing as the post-World War II surge in enrollment and federal funding was ebbing.

Inescapably, the units that formed CWRU were locked in competition for shrinking resources, if not survival. And in that mix, dominated by heavyweights such as the School of Medicine and the main sciences, computers was a flyweight.

All of that was topped off by intense feelings among Case people of being severely violated by the Institutes loss of independence, which feelings were heightened by the substantial upgrading that had occurred under the longtime leadership of former Case president T. Keith Glennan (president from 1947 to 1966).

Thomas Bier is an associate of the university at Cleveland State University.

The combination of those potent forces upset CWRU institutional stability, which was not fully reestablished until the presidency of Barbara Snyder 40 years later.

Although in 1971, CWRUs computer engineering program would be the first of its type to be accredited in the nation, momentum sagged and the opportunity to be among the vanguard was lost. Today, the universitys programs in computer engineering and science are well-regarded but not top-tier.

But the arrival of quantum computing poses the challenge to identify new opportunity and exploit it.

Quantum computing, as IBM puts it, is tomorrows computing today. Its enormous processing power enables multiple computations to be performed simultaneously with unprecedented speed. And the Clinics installation will be first private-sector, on-premises system in the United States.

Clinic CEO and President Dr. Tomislav Mihaljevic said, These new computing technologies can help revolutionize discovery in the life sciences and help transform medicine, while training the workforce of the future and potentially growing our economy.

In terms of jobs, the economy of Northeast Ohio has been tepid for decades, reflecting, in part, its scant role in computer innovation. While our job growth has been nil, computer hot spots such as Seattle and Austin have been gaining an average of 25,000 jobs annually.

Cleveland cannot become a Seattle or an Austin. Various factors dictate that. But, hopefully, the arrival of quantum computing a short distance down Euclid Avenue from CWRU will trigger creative, promising initiatives. Maybe, as young technologists and researchers become involved in the Clinic-IBM venture, an innovative entrepreneur will emerge and lead the growth of a whole new industry. Maybe, the timing couldnt be better.

Quantum computing bring, it, on!

Thomas Bier is an associate of the university at Cleveland State University where, until he retired in 2003, he was director of the Housing Policy Research Program in the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs. Bier received both his masters in science degree, in 1963, and Ph.D., in 1968, from from Case/CWRU. Both degrees are in organizational behavior.

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Quantum computings imminent arrival in Cleveland could be a back-to-the-future moment: Thomas Bier - cleveland.com