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We are at an inflection point

Ever since Professor Alan Turing proposed the principle of the modern computer in 1936, computing has come a long way. While advancements to date have been promising, the future is even brighter, all thanks to quantum computing, which performs calculations based on the behaviour of particles at the sub-atomic level, writes Kalyan Kumar, CVP and CTO IT Services,HCL Technologies.

Quantum computing promises to unleash unimaginable computing power thats not only capable of addressing current computational limits, but unearthing new solutions to unsolved scientific and social mysteries. Whats more, thanks to increasing advancement since the 1980s, quantum computing can now drive some incredible social and business transformations.

Quantum computing holds immense promise in defining a positive, inclusive and human centric future, which is what theWEF Future Council on Quantum Computingenvisages. The most anticipated uses of quantum computing are driven by its potential to simulate quantum structures and behaviours across chemicals and materials. This promise is being seen guardedly by current scientists who claim quantum computing is still far from making a meaningful impact.

This said, quantum computing is expected to open amazing and much-needed possibilities in medical research. Drug development time, which usually takes more than 10 to 12 years with billions of dollars of investment, is expected to reduce considerably, alongside the potential to explore unique chemical compositions that may just be beyond the limits of current classical computing. Quantum computing can also help with more accurate weather forecasting, and provide accurate information that can help save tremendous amounts of agriculture production from damage.

Quantum computing promises a better and improved future, and while humans are poised to benefit greatly from this revolution, businesses too can expect unapparelled value.

When it comes to quantum computing, it can be said that much of the world is at the they dont know what they dont know stage. Proof points are appearing, and it is seemingly becoming clear that quantum computing solves problems that cannot be addressed by todays computers. Within transportation, for example, quantum computing is being used to develop battery and self-driving technologies, while Volkswagen has also been using quantum computing to match patterns and predict traffic conditions in advance, ensuring a smoother movement of traffic. In supply chains, logistics and trading are receiving a significant boost from the greater computing power and high-resolution modelling quantum computing provides, adding a huge amount of intelligence using new approaches to machine learning.

The possibilities for businesses are immense and go way beyond these examples mentioned above, in domains such as healthcare, financial services and IT. Yet a new approach is required. The companies that succeed in quantum computing will be those that create value chains to exploit the new insights, and form a management system to match the high-resolution view of the business that will emerge.

While there are some initial stage quantum devices already available, these are still far from what the world has been envisaging. Top multinational technology companies have been investing considerably in this field, but they still have some way to go. There has recently been talk of prototype quantum computers performing computations that would have previously taken 10,000 years in just 200 seconds. Though of course impressive, this is just one of the many steps needed to achieve the highest success in quantum computing.

It is vital to understand how and when we are going to adopt quantum computing, so we know the right time to act. The aforementioned prototype should be a wakeup call to early adopters who are seeking to find ways to create a durable competitive advantage. We even recently saw a business announcing its plans to make a prototype quantum computer available on its cloud, something we will all be able to buy or access some time from now. If organisations truly understand the value and applications of quantum computing, they will be able to create new products and services that nobody else has. However, productising and embedding quantum computing into products may take a little more time.

One important question arises from all this: are we witnessing the beginning of the end for classical computing? When looking at the facts, it seems not. With the advent of complete and practical quantum computers, were seeing a hybrid computing model emerging where digital binary computers will co-process and co-exist with quantum Qbit computers. The processing and resource sharing needs are expected to be optimised using real time analysis, where quantum takes over exponential computational tasks. To say the least, quantum computing is not about replacing digital computing, but about coexistence enabling composed computing that handles different tasks at the same time similar to humans having left and right brains for analytical and artistic dominance.

If one things for sure, its that we are at an inflection point, witnessing what could arguably be one of the most disruptive changes in human existence. Having a systematic and planned approach to adoption of quantum computing will not only take some of its mystery away, but reveal its true strategic value, helping us to know when and how to become part of this once in a lifetime revolution.

Read more:
What Is Quantum Computing, And How Can It Unlock Value For Businesses? - Computer Business Review

Several companies are working to advance the technology, according to a new report.

The market for quantum networking is projected to reach $5.5 billion by 2025, according to a new report from Inside Quantum Technology (IQT).

While all computing systems rely on the ability to store and manipulate information in individual bits, quantum computers "leverage quantum mechanical phenomena to manipulate information" and to do so requires the use of quantum bits, or qubits, according to IBM.

SEE:Quantum computing: An insider's guide (TechRepublic)

Quantum computing is seen as the panacea for solving the problems computers are not equipped to handle now.

"For problems above a certain size and complexity, we don't have enough computational power on earth to tackle them,'' IBM said. This requires a new kind of computing, and this is where quantum comes in.

IQT says that quantum networking revenue comes primarily from quantum key distribution (QK), quantum cloud computing, and quantum sensor networks. Eventually, these strands will merge into a Quantum Internet, the report said.

Cloud access to quantum computers is core to the business models of many leading quantum computer companiessuch as IBM, Microsoft and Rigettias well as several leading academic institutions, according to the report.

Microsoft, for instance, designed a special programming language for quantum computers, called Q#, and released a Quantum Development Kit to help programmers create new applications, according to CBInsights.

One of Google's quantum computing projects involves working with NASA to apply the tech's optimization abilities to space travel.

The Quantum Internet network will have the same "geographical breadth of coverage as today's internet," the IQT report stated.

It will provide a powerful platform for communications among quantum computers and other quantum devices, the report said.

And will enable a quantum version of the Internet of Things. "Finally, quantum networks can be the most secure networks ever built completely invulnerable if constructed properly," the report said.

The report, "Quantum Networks: A Ten-Year Forecast and Opportunity Analysis," forecasts demand for quantum network equipment, software and services in both volume and value terms.

"The time has come when the rapidly developing quantum technology industry needs to quantify the opportunities coming out of quantum networking," said Lawrence Gasman, president of Inside Quantum Technology, in a statement.

Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) adds unbreakable coding of key distribution to public key encryption, making it virtually invulnerable, according to the report.

QKD is the first significant revenue source to come from the emerging Quantum Internet and will create almost $150 million in revenue in 2020, the report said.

QKD's early success is due to potential usersbig financial and government organizationshave an immediate need for 100% secure encryption, the IQT report stated.

By 2025, IQT projects that revenue from "quantum clouds" are expected to exceed $2 billion.

Although some large research and government organizations are buying quantum computers for on-premise use, the high cost of the machines coupled with the immaturity of the technology means that the majority of quantum users are accessing quantum through clouds, the report explained.

Quantum sensor networks promise enhanced navigation and positioning and more sensitive medical imaging modalities, among other use cases, the report said.

"This is a very diverse area in terms of both the range of applications and the maturity of the technology."

However, by 2025 revenue from quantum sensors is expected to reach about $1.2 billion.

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Originally posted here:
Quantum networking projected to be $5.5 billion market in 2025 - TechRepublic

A new research centre with the potential to revolutionise computing, communication, sensing and imaging technologies is set to be launched by the University of Sheffield this week (22 January 2020).

The Sheffield Quantum Centre, which will be officially opened by Lord Jim ONeill, Chair of Chatham House and University of Sheffield alumnus, is bringing together more than 70 of the Universitys leading scientists and engineers to develop new quantum technologies.

Quantum technologies are a broad range of new materials, devices and information technology protocols in physics and engineering. They promise unprecedented capabilities and performance by exploiting phenomena that cannot be explained by classical physics.

Quantum technologies could lead to the development of more secure communications technologies and computers that can solve problems far beyond the capabilities of existing computers.

Research into quantum technologies is a high priority for the UK and many countries around the world. The UK government has invested heavily in quantum research as part of a national programme and has committed 1 billion in funding over 10 years.

Led by the Universitys Department of Physics and Astronomy, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering and Department of Computer Science, the Sheffield Quantum Centre will join a group of northern universities that are playing a significant role in the development of quantum technologies.

The University of Sheffield has a strong presence in quantum research with world leading capabilities in crystal growth, nanometre scale device fabrication and device physics research. A spin-out company has already been formed to help commercialise research, with another in preparation.

Professor Maurice Skolnick, Director of the Sheffield Quantum Centre, said: The University of Sheffield already has very considerable strengths in the highly topical area of quantum science and technology. I have strong expectation that the newly formed centre will bring together these diverse strengths to maximise their impact, both internally and more widely across UK universities and funding bodies.

During the opening ceremony, the Sheffield Quantum Centre will also launch its new 2.1 million Quantum Technology Capital equipment.

Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the equipment is a molecular beam epitaxy cluster tool designed to grow very high quality wafers of semiconductor materials types of materials that have numerous everyday applications such as in mobile phones and lasers that drive the internet.

The semiconductor materials also have many new quantum applications which researchers are focusing on developing.

Professor Jon Heffernan from the Universitys Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, added: The University of Sheffield has a 40-year history of pioneering developments in semiconductor science and technology and is host to the National Epitaxy Facility. With the addition of this new quantum technologies equipment I am confident our new research centre will lead to many new and exciting technological opportunities that can exploit the strange but powerful concepts from quantum science.

Originally posted here:
University of Sheffield launches Quantum centre to develop the technologies of tomorrow - Quantaneo, the Quantum Computing Source

The past decade saw technological advancements that transformed how we work, live, and learn. The next one will bring even greater change as quantum computing, cloud computing, 5G, and artificial intelligence mature and proliferate. These changes will happen rapidly, and the work to manage their impact will need to keep pace.

This session at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, brought together industry experts to discuss how these technologies will shape the next decade, followed by a panel discussion about the challenges and benefits this era will bring and if the world can control the technology it creates.

Henry Blodget, CEO, cofounder, and editorial director, Insider Inc.

This interview is part of a partnership between Business Insider and Microsoft at the 2020 World Economic Forum. Business Insider editors independently decided on the topics broached and questions asked.

Below, find each of the panelists most memorable contributions:

Julie Love believes global problems such as climate change can potentially be solved far more quickly and easily through developments in quantum computing.

She said: We [Microsoft] think about problems that were facing: problems that are caused by the destruction of the environment; by climate change, and [that require] optimization of our natural resources, [such as] global food production.

Its quantum computing that really a lot of us scientists and technologists are looking for to solve these problems. We can have the promise of solving them exponentially faster, which is incredibly profound. And that the reason is this: [quantum] technology speaks the language of nature.

By computing the way that nature computes, theres so much information contained in these atoms and molecules. Nature doesnt think about a chemical reaction; nature doesnt have to do some complex computation. Its inherent in the material itself.

Love claimed that, if harnessed in this way, quantum computing could allow scientists to design a compound that could remove carbon from the air. She added that researchers will need to be really pragmatic and practical about how we take this from, from science fiction into the here-and-now.

I believe the future of AI is actually interdependence, collaboration, and cooperation between people and systems, both at the macro [and micro] levels, said Cassell, who is also a faculty member of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

At the macro-level, [look], for example, at robots on the factory floor, she said. Today, theres been a lot of fear about how autonomous they actually are. First of all, theyre often dangerous. Theyre so autonomous, you have to get out of their way. And it would be nice if they were more interdependent if we could be there at the same time as they are. But also, there is no factory floor where any person is autonomous.

In Cassells view, AI systems could also end up being built collaboratively with experts from non-tech domains, such as psychologists.

Today, tools [for building AI systems] are mostly machine learning tools, she noted. And they are, as youve heard a million times, black boxes. You give [the AI system] lots of examples. You say: This is somebody being polite. That is somebody being impolite. Learn about that. But when they build a system thats polite, you dont know why they did that.

What Id like to see is systems that allow us to have these bottom-up, black-box approaches from machine learning, but also have, for example, psychologists in there, saying thats not actually really polite, or its polite in the way that you dont ever want to hear.'

One thing I constantly wish is that there was a more standardized measurement for everybody to report how much theyre spending per employee on employee training because that really doesnt exist, when you think about it, said Smith, Microsofts president and chief legal officer since 2015.

I think, anecdotally, one can get a pretty strong sense that if you go back to the 1980s and 1990s employers invested a huge amount in employee training around technology. It was teaching you how to use MS-DOS, or Windows, or how to use Word or Excel interestingly, things that employers dont really feel obliged to teach employees today.

Learning doesnt stop when you leave school. Were going to have to work a little bit harder. And thats true for everyone.

He added that this creates a further requirement: to make sure the skills people do pick up as they navigate life are easily recognizable by other employers.

Ultimately, theres a wide variety of post-secondary credentials. The key is to have credentials that employers recognize as being valuable. Its why LinkedIn and others are so focused on new credentialing systems. Now, the good news is that should make things cheaper. It all should be more accessible.

But I do think that to go back to where I started employers are going to have to invest more [in employee training]. And were going to have to find some ways to do it in a manner that perhaps is a little more standardized.

Suri said 5G will be able to help develop industries that go far beyond entertainment and telecoms, and will impact physical or manual industries such as manufacturing.

The thing about 5G is that its built for machine-type communications. When we received the whole idea of 5G, it was how do we get not just human beings to interact with each other, but also large machines, he said.

So we think that there is a large economic boost possible from 5G and 5G-enabled technologies because it would underpin many of these other technologies, especially in the physical industries.

Suri cited manufacturing, healthcare, and agriculture as just some of the industries 5G could help become far more productive within a decade.

He added: Yes, well get movies and entertainment faster, but it is about a lot of physical industries that didnt quite digitize yet. Especially in the physical industries, we [Nokia] think that the [productivity] gains could be as much as 35% starting in the year 2028 starting with the US first, and then going out into other geographies, like India, China, the European Union, and so on.

Read the rest here:
Quantum computing, climate change, and interdependent AI: Academics and execs predict how tech will revolutionize the next decade - Business Insider

Are we here right now? And if we are, can we trust what we see before us?

The idea of life as a complete or occasional dream state isn't new it goes back millennia, stretching through Mahayana Buddhism to the ancient Greeks and into the Renaissance. In the past few decades, the idea that perceived reality is in fact a quantum computer simulation has gained a lot of cachet, too.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves here; let us return to the 17th century in what's known as the Spanish Golden Age. It's then that live theater thrived on the Iberian Peninsula, when Pedro Caldern de la Barca wrote Life is a Dream, now staged, with a youthful cast and spirit, at North Coast Repertory Theatre.

Caldern's play, written and first performed in 1635, took place in Poland and what was then the Grand Duchy of Muskovy, but director Elio Robles has set the production in the manner and dress of 17th century Spain. At its center is a story central to many European plays of the era: the transfer of dynastically held royal power.

Events begin with two travelers, Rosaura (Andrea Carrillo), who is disguised as a man, and Clarin (Jeremy Stolp), arriving at a prison tower to find a miserable man bound in chains. The man is Segismundo (Victor Parra) and we come to learn that he has been jailed simply for the crime of being born, held under the eye of Clotaldo (Andrew Hempstead). Although it may not be clear in the first act, the main overall drama at the heart of Life is a Dream is the story of Segismundo and Rosura. The reason behind her guise as a man is a desire to control her own destiny a central theme of the play and to regain her own honor.

Clotaldo takes Rosaura and Clarin into custody, but recognizes a sword in her possession as one that once belonged to him. Thinking she is male, Clotaldo believes that she might be his son. The action then shifts to the court of King Basilo (Jesse Chavez), where it is revealed that he had been warned decades before that his son will be born a violent, ruthless maniac, and so banished him to the tower forever. He reveals this secret to his niece Estrella (Michelle Purnell) and nephew Astolfo (Garrett Vallejo) on the eve of Clotaldo arriving with Rosaura and Clarin.

This sets in motion the king's decision to have his son freed and brought to the court, where he proposes to test his abilities as a potential heir to the throne. First, he orders that Segismundo be drugged nearly to death. Segismundo arrives at the palace convinced that either his past time in chains has been a horrible dream or perhaps the present is a dream escape from his captivity.

In addition to the themes of father-son conflict and court intrigue that blossom into full war by the play's end, Segismundo's pondering on the state of what is real and whether one's actions in what's perceived to be a dream have echoes in reality is at the heart of the play.

This is not as obtuse and inaccessible as it may sound, for Caldern was a great playwright of his time, a peer of Cervantes with a poet's gift for psychological insights. Life is a Dream manages to be entertaining while deftly moving through such ideas as fate, determinism undermining free will, gender roles and men subjugating women.

That is a lot to weave into a story but, under Robles' direction, things move along at a good clip. And while some of the internecine royal court activity slackens matters, it gives way to Segismundo and Rosura meeting and becoming more revealed to one another in the next act, focusing the story. A Humboldt State University alum with experience as an actor in Radioman last year at Dell'Arte, Robles is well-suited to helm this production, which is excellently costumed by Megan Hughes.

As Segismundo, Parra has the best role and builds well on his previous role at NCRT in last season's Native Gardens, bringing spark and soul-searching to a man often at odds with reality and existence. Like most of the young cast in Life is a Dream, he has a pedigree from HSU Theater Arts Department productions. This also includes the very good Carrillo in her NCRT debut as Rosaura, as well as Stolp and Vallejo in adept supporting performances.

Life is A Dream blends elements of a fairy tale with a larger morality tale, offering much to ponder about reality, free will and the value of honor. As for how much of the world we perceive is truly real, that's perhaps an answer for another time.

North Coast Repertory Theatre's Life is a Dream plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. through Feb. 8, with Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. through Feb. 9. For more information, call 442-NCRT or visit http://www.ncert.net.

David Jervis is an Arcata-based freelance writer and editor. He prefers he/him pronouns.

Opening

Ferndale Repertory Theatre unpack's a graphic novelist's relationship with her late father in the drama Fun Home from Jan. 23 through Feb. 16. Call 786-5483 or visit http://www.ferndalerep.org.

An alternative take on the Bard and the Danish prince hits the stage with local musicians playing an original score Jan. 30 through Feb. 1 with The Hamlet Question at HSU's Gist Hall Theatre. Call 826-3928.

The Arcata Playhouse hosts an international production of Plush and Barrio Caleidoscopio with Teatro de la Vuelta and Dell'Arte Jan. 31 and Feb. 1. Call 822-1575 or visit http://www.arcataplayhouse.org.

Immersive theater comes to the Bayside Community Hall when Taiko Swingposium recreates a Japanese American internment camp mess hall with actors, dancers, San Jose Taiko and the HSU Jazz Orchestra Jan. 31 and Feb. 1. Call 633-3155 or visit Taiko Swing Humboldt on Facebook.

Continued here:
Is This the Real Life? - North Coast Journal