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Viewers of the popular 60 Minutes television magazine may have been surprised to see a feature in December on the state of quantum computing, typically an unapproachable, wonky topic for mainstream audiences. But, given the hype and ensuing adoption level with all things AI, perhaps this is a sign that an even more sophisticated and potentially life-changing technology will have its moment next.

More significant than the recent flurry of media attention around this esoteric technology (driven in part by some notable experiments announced by key players, large and small) is the imminent re-authorization by the U.S. Congress of the bi-partisan supported National Quantum Initiative. If passed as expected, it will earmark more than $3 billion in funds for quantum research over the next five years.

There is also newfound urgency in seeing results sooner: Alan McQuinn, a staff member on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, recently emphasized that the initiative will focus on investing in near-term quantum sciences applications.

We wanted to start moving towards use cases, moving towards applications, to try and show proof of need for this technology so that it can be deployed across economic sectors, he said.

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Similar initiatives by UK, Canadian and EU government entities are fueling more short-term progress, motivated at least in part by investment and developments in China. Indeed, staying ahead in quantum may in fact be a more strategic priority than the AI arms race.

Quantum computing enthusiasts have rightly been accused of overhyping the technologys near-term impacts. Its potential to solve macro challenges in science, health, energy, environment and finance drove a frenzy of anticipation.

Expectations were, inevitably, set too high and for results to happen too soon.

In 2019, Google claimed quantum supremacy, where a quantum device outperformed a classical one. While the application was not practically useful, a wave of quantum start-ups and big funding rounds emerged in the public and private markets. Big claims in impossible timeframes were subsequently made.

By 2022, this irrational exuberance had cooled. The financial markets retracted, and valuations fell as the challenge of building a useful quantum computer was understood. Talk of a quantum winter emerged as frustrated investors, looking for moonshot wins, hinted at pulling back if demonstrable and practical progress could not be seen.

But 2024 will be when we see steady progress and tangible goals, replacing years of boom-or-bust thinking.

Let me summarize that challenge in one word: Errors.

A typical quantum computer is made up of three layers: quantum algorithms, the quantum error correction stack and quantum bits (qubits).

Qubits are prone to errors, which quickly overwhelm their calculations. By developing quantum algorithms and a set of techniques called quantum error correction (QEC) then we can reduce errors to the point where we can unlock world-changing applications.

This will not happen overnight. It wont happen next year. When will it happen? Historically, quantum experts have always said were about 10 years away from that goal.

But the countdown has already begun. With the development of next-generation quantum algorithms and error correction coupled with ongoing results at the qubit level, I predict this timescale is closer to 7 to 8 years.

Progress in QEC dominated in 2023 with several landmark papers and announcements. A year ago, Google released a code to correct errors, and, more recently, quantum company Quera has produced the largest number of error-free qubits, while IBMs new roadmap has a core focus on error correction.

As we enter 2024, long-term optimism is higher than ever, with quantum computing predicted to unlock $1.3 trillion by 2035 across multiple industries. Waves of investment also arrived towards the end of 2023 for strong quantum companies.

These investments were predominantly led by governments using a testbed business model. Testbeds allow experts to test and benchmark the many different components required to build a useful quantum computer, breaking the challenge into short-term, digestible chunks.

In the long-term, the UK has arguably unveiled the most ambitious plans to date with a clear target to create a TeraQuop quantum computer (or one capable of a trillion error-free operations) by 2035. A TeraQuop is significant, as it truly takes us beyond supercomputing.

By contrast, todays quantum computers are capable of a just few hundred error-free operations.

This leap may sound like a return to the irrational exuberance of previous years. But there are many tangible reasons to believe.

The quantum computing industry is now connecting these short-term testbeds with long-term moonshots (such as the TeraQuop) as it starts to aim for middle-term, incremental (but just as ambitious) goals.

As we approach this threshold, well start to more intrinsically understand errors and fix them. We can start to model simple molecules and systems, developing more powerful quantum algorithms. Then, we can work on more interesting (and impactful) applications with each new generation/testbed of quantum computer.

What will those applications be? We dont know. And thats OK.

Let me take you further back in time when one of the worlds early digital computers was developed: EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator). Developed in the Cambridge University Mathematical Laboratory, EDSAC was the first practical general purpose stored program electronic computer. The winners of three Nobel Prizes in Chemistry (1962), Medicine (1963) and Physics (1974) all acknowledged the role it played in their research.

These applications were unimaginable when EDSAC was first run in 1949.

Were now at the same point in quantum computing.

We dont know exactly what applications a useful quantum computer will unlock. But I predict there will be many, multidisciplinary Nobel Prize nods to come for the teams that develop the worlds first useful quantum computer.

But first we need to develop better quantum algorithms and QEC techniques. Then, we will need fewer qubits to run the same quantum calculations and we can unlock useful quantum computing, sooner.

As progress and pace continues to accelerate, 2024 will be the year when the conversation around quantum applications has real substance as we follow tangible goals, commit to realistic ambitions and unlock real results.

The over-hype is over, and the clock is ticking.

Steve Brierley is CEO and founder of quantum computing company Riverlane.

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2024: The year quantum moves past its hype? - VentureBeat

Quantum computing is a new field of computing which utilizes quantum mechanics to produce machines that can handle far more calculations than traditional computers.

The goal of quantum computing is to produce qubits, which are a measure of computing capacity. So far, the industry hasnt managed to sustainably achieve enough qubits to supplant other types of supercomputers.

But with analysts suggesting that the industry could reach a viable qubit computing level within the next few years, quantum computing stocks could be set for exponential gains over the next five to ten years. Here are three of the leaders in this emerging industry.

When thinking of pureplay quantum computing stocks, IonQ (NYSE:IONQ) should be the first name that comes to mind.

IonQ has been first-to-market in a number of ways. It has tremendous partnerships, it is available on leading cloud computing platforms and it has some of the best minds and intellectual property in the industry.

And while quantum computing is still at the very beginning of monetization, IonQ has started to generate appreciable commercial revenues. In its Q3 results, the companys $6.1 million of revenues rose 121% year-over-year and exceeded the high end of prior guidance. The company boosted its full-year guidance and bookings outlook once again. Additionally, IonQ reached $100 million in cumulative product bookings in the first three years of its commercial phase of operations.

Skeptics like to criticize quantum computing as a science project that hasnt yet achieved notable real-world results. Thats certainly been true to some extent in the past. However, IonQ is making admirable progress in turning quantum computing from a dream into a reality. It also has a strong balance sheet with plenty of cash to fund its operations while it scales toward profitability.

Source: Laborant / Shutterstock.com

Investors often tend to think of International Business Machines (NYSE:IBM) as a stodgy consulting and IT services company. And that makes up a huge piece of the companys operations, to be certain.

However, IBM has always prided itself on innovation, long leading the world in the number of patents that its researchers obtain. Its commitment to R&D has paid off over the years, and thats become increasingly apparent in recent months.

IBM stock has rocketed higher over the past quarter thanks to significant acceleration in the firms cloud and artificial intelligence operations. And investors shouldnt sleep on IBMs quantum division either.

In fact, IBM has the worlds largest quantum computing fleet in the world with its Qiskit Runtime system. Hundreds of institutions including leading research universities, Fortune 500 companies and research labs have joined IBMs Quantum Network. It offers access to 100+ qubit devices. Over time, IBM believes its quantum computing solutions should aid companies in key fields such as cybersecurity while layering nicely onto IBMs existing cloud and AI solutions.

Source: josefkubes / Shutterstock.com

Honeywell (NYSE:HON) is a leading industrial company. Its roots go back to Butz-Thermo Electric Regulator, a company which developed the first predecessor to the modern thermostat. Over the decades, Honeywell has created all sorts of inventions including barcodes, unleaded gasoline, biodegradable detergents and aviation autopilots.

Given that context, it shouldnt be all that surprising that Honeywell continues to come up with new innovations outside of its present core industrial business. Such as quantum computing.

Honeywell believes that quantum computing will be integral for managing supply chains and industrial automation. Given the high number of constantly changing variables in managing these logistical puzzles, a next-gen quantum computer could potentially be orders of magnitude more efficient in designing and overseeing these systems.

To this point, Honeywell helped generate novel discoveries in quantum computing, and it has spun that unit out into a separate firm, Quantinuum, which is pursuing solutions in cybersecurity, drug discovery, AI, and finance among other fields. Honeywell retains a majority shareholding in Quantinuum, and the firm just raised funds at a $5 billion valuation in January.

On the date of publication, Ian Bezek held a long position in IBM stock. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.

Ian Bezek has written more than 1,000 articles for InvestorPlace.com and Seeking Alpha. He also worked as a Junior Analyst for Kerrisdale Capital, a $300 million New York City-based hedge fund. You can reach him on Twitter at @irbezek.

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3 Once-in-a-Lifetime Quantum Computing Stocks With Unprecedented Surge Potential - InvestorPlace

OXFORD, England, Feb. 6, 2024 Q-CTRL, a global leader in developing useful quantum technologies through quantum control infrastructure software, was recently announced as a winner of the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) Quantum Catalyst Fund Competition.

Awarded 1 million (~US$1.26 million) in funding, Q-CTRLs winning proposal will deliver new quantum-hardware-optimized algorithmic solvers built on their proprietary performance management software to the Department for Transport and Network Rail. This software will address train schedule optimization for both large-scale rail networks and detailed station routing, bringing a new generation of quantum solutions to pressing government problems.

The SBRI competition is funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and Innovate UK (IUK) to explore the benefit of using quantum technologies in various areas of interest for the UK government.

The competition consisted of two stages: Phase 1 with a three-month duration and a 2 million total budget, followed by Phase 2 extending 15 months with a total budget of up to 15 million. Successful projects from Phase 1 competed to continue their development in Phase 2.

Q-CTRL was one of six entries achieving Phase 2 status and received a share of the 15 million funding pool. The work to be delivered builds on Q-CTRLs deep expertise in quantum computing for logistics and transport, developed with customers including Transport for NSW and the Australian Army.

Science Minister, Andrew Griffith MP said, As we steer towards an economy benefitting from quantum, this further 45 million in funding underscores our commitment to support bright UK innovators who are pushing boundaries and seizing the potential of this technology to transform our public services.

Planning and operating public rail transport networks involves making tough scheduling choices to balance passenger service, infrastructure management, and resilience to disruption. To effectively meet these objectives, fast and high-quality computing tools are needed, solving a class of problems called optimization.

The Department for Transport and Network Rail is interested in leveraging state-of-the-art quantum solutions for scheduling to provide improvements in transit time, robustness to delays, and reductions in operating costs and emissions.

In the winning proposal, researchers and engineers at Q-CTRL will tailor a quantum optimization algorithm for high-performance scheduling to run efficiently on quantum computer hardware, and test on systems from Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC). The software is designed to be usable by anyone in the Department for Transport and Network Rails scheduling team, without needing any expertise in quantum computing.

Andre Carvalho, Head of Quantum Control Solutions at Q-CTRL noted, This funding marks a significant step towards applying quantum computing in practical settings. By optimizing train schedules with quantum algorithms, were not just enhancing efficiency and reducing emissions; were paving the way for quantum technologies to solve real-world problems and make a tangible impact on peoples lives.

Q-CTRLs leading expertise in delivering useful quantum solutions leveraging performance-management infrastructure software for quantum computers, together with OQCs state-of-the-art quantum processors, will enable the Department to easily prototype quantum solutions for their most pressing challenges and gain real insights into the future of quantum computing for their sector.

Quantum computing is an emerging technology with the opportunity to transform a wide range of industries. In the near term, quantum optimization for transport, logistics, and machine learning is a leading candidate for early value capture, where even small computational benefits can deliver huge advantages.

About Q-CTRL

Q-CTRLs quantum control infrastructure software for R&D professionals and quantum computing end users delivers the highest performance error-correcting and suppressing techniques globally, and provides a unique capability accelerating the pathway to the first useful quantum computers and quantum sensors. Q-CTRL operates a globally leading quantum sensing division focused on software-level innovation for strategic capability. Q-CTRL also has developed Black Opal, an edtech platform that enables users to quickly learn quantum computing.

Source: Q-CTRL

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Q-CTRL Awarded 1M Funding in UK Quantum Catalyst Competition - HPCwire

Revolutionizing Quantum Computing with Multi-Nuclear Spin Qubit Registers

Quantum computing, an exciting frontier of computer science, is witnessing significant strides in technological advancements. Central to this progress is the development of multi-nuclear spin qubit registers using phosphorus donor atom qubits in silicon. This breakthrough, powered by the hyperfine interaction between the electron and nuclear spins, has enabled swift qubit operation, control, and high-fidelity initialization of all nuclear spins within a four-qubit nuclear spin register. Unlike non-deterministic procedures, this deterministic protocol for initializing nuclear spins presents a promising alternative for quantum computing.

The precise placement of phosphorus donors in silicon has resulted in direct inter-register coupling, showcasing long spin relaxation times, highly tunable exchange coupling, and improved qubit addressability. Moreover, researchers have managed to achieve high-fidelity control of a single electron spin qubit in a multi-nuclear spin qubit register, with a primitive gate fidelity surpassing the fault-tolerant threshold for error correction in quantum computing. This atomic engineering in a solid-state material has the potential to introduce novel phenomena, reduce gate densities, and decrease correlated noise between qubits.

A study by researchers from the University of New South Wales and Silicon Quantum Computing Pty Ltd has provided insights into the superexchange coupling of donor qubits in silicon. By placing four phosphorus donors in a linear chain, coherent spin coupling was achieved between the end dopants of the chain. This research provides an in-depth understanding of long-range indirect coupling for donor qubits in silicon, signifying a promising building block for silicon quantum computers.

In a bid to fast-track the growth of the quantum computing sector, the UKs National Quantum Computing Centre is investing 30 million to establish seven quantum computing testbeds by March 2025. These testbeds, based on various hardware technologies, will serve to demonstrate and evaluate the capabilities of different qubit platforms such as superconducting qubits, trapped ion platforms, neutral atoms, photonics-based quantum computing, and spin qubits within a silicon chip architecture. This initiative targets building fully functioning systems within a 15-month sprint timeframe.

Aside from showcasing the potential of diverse hardware solutions, the quantum computing testbeds initiative aims to reinforce local supply chains for numerous quantum technologies. Furthermore, it envisions a collaborative landscape that ensures intellectual property protection for all participating organizations. As quantum computing continues to evolve, such initiatives are vital in fostering an environment of collaboration, innovation, and advancement in the field.

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Revolutionizing Quantum Computing with Multi-Nuclear Spin Qubit Registers - Medriva

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) has released an updated report on quantum computing progress in the past five years, based on a workshop held in the spring 2023. While the CCC report doesnt break new ground its a good overview.

CCC posted a blog this week by Catherine Gill on the report that notes:

Quantum Computing is in the Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) era currently, meaning that Quantum Computers are still prone to high error rates and are able to maintain few logical qubits. The work being done in Quantum Error Correction, however, is enabling Quantum Computing to transition towards a Fault-tolerant future. There has been remarkable progress in quantum computer hardware in the last five years, says Kenneth Brown, Professor of Engineering at Duke University, but challenges remain in terms of reducing errors and scaling systems. We thought it was critical to bring together experts in quantum computing, computer architecture, and systems engineering to plan for the next ten years.

The workshop and subsequent report focused on five areas:

The infographic list of qubit types below is a nice primer. Its necessarily incomplete as the number of qubit types seems to grow daily.

The report concludes Quantum computing is at a historic and pivotal time, with substantial engineering progress in the past 5 years and a transition to fault-tolerant systems in the next 5 years. Taking stock of what we have learned from NISQ systems, this report examined 5 key areas in which computer scientists have an important role in exploring.

Among the reports interesting findings is a recommendation to standardize QC benchmarking. We recommend exploring standardized benchmarking frameworks to identify a set of benchmarks which would enable us to evaluate quantum platforms, algorithms, and potential domain problems. For example, an end-to-end quantum machine learning benchmark would allow us to evaluate not only the general performance of a quantum device, but also the algorithms noise resilience and data sensitivity. More work on widely accepted benchmarks with input from other communities (computer scientists, machine-learning communities) may also lead to increased collaboration and interest from other domain experts.

(CCC is the NSF-created entity in 2007 The CCC operates as a programmatic committee of CRA under CRAs bylaws: its membership only slightly overlaps the CRAs Board of Directors; it has significant autonomy; and it has a great deal of synergistic mutual benefit with CRA. The CCC Council meets three times every calendar year, including at least one meeting in Washington, D.C., and has biweekly conference calls between these meetings. Also, the CCC leadership has biweekly conference calls with the leadership of NSFsDirectorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE).)

Link to CCC blog, https://cccblog.org/2024/01/25/ccc-releases-the-5-year-update-to-the-next-steps-in-quantum-computing-workshop-report/

Link to CCC report, https://cccblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/5-Year-Update-to-the-Next-Steps-in-Quantum-Computing.pdf

*The report authors include: Kenneth Brown, Duke University Fred Chong, University of Chicago Kaitlin N. Smith, Northwestern University and Infleqtion Thomas M. Conte, Georgia Institute of Technology and Community Computing Consortium Austin Adams, Georgia Institute of Technology Aniket Dalvi, Duke University Christopher Kang, University of Chicago Josh Viszlai, University of Chicago

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CCC Releases Updated Report on Quantum Computing Progress - HPCwire