Mediaboss Marketing

UCLA has received a $5 million pledge from Boeing Co. to support faculty at the Center for Quantum Science and Engineering.

The center, which is jointly operated by the UCLA College Division of Physical Sciences and the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, brings together scientists and engineers at the leading edge of quantum information science and technology. Its members have expertise in disciplines spanning physics, materials science, electrical engineering, computer science, chemistry and mathematics.

We are grateful for Boeings significant pledge, which will help drive innovation in quantum science, said MiguelGarca-Garibay, UCLAs dean of physical sciences. This remarkable investment demonstrates confidence that UCLAs renowned faculty and researchers will spur progress in this emerging field.

UCLA faculty and researchers are already working on exciting advances in quantum science and engineering, Garca-Garibaysaid. And the divisions new one-year masters program, which begins this fall, will help meet the huge demand for trained professionals in quantum technologies.

Quantum science explores the laws of nature that apply to matter at the very smallest scales, like atoms and subatomic particles. Scientists and engineers believe that controlling quantum systems has vast potential for advancing fields ranging from medicine to national security.

Harnessing quantum technologies for the aerospace industry is one of the great challenges we face in the coming years, said Greg Hyslop, Boeings chief engineer and executive vice president of engineering, test and technology. We are committed to growing this field of study and our relationship with UCLA moves us in that direction.

In addition to its uses in aerospace, examples of quantum theory already in action include superconducting magnets, lasers and MRI scans. The next generation of quantum technology will enable powerful quantum computers, sensors and communication systems and transform clinical trials, defense systems, clean water systems and a wide range of other technologies.

Quantum information science and technology promises society-changing capabilities in everything from medicine to computing and beyond, said Eric Hudson, UCLAs David S. Saxon Presidential Professor of Physics and co-director of the center. There is still, however, much work to be done to realize these benefits. This work requires serious partnership between academia and industry, and the Boeing pledge will be an enormous help in both supporting cutting-edge research at UCLA and creating the needed relationships with industry stakeholders.

The Boeing gift complements recent support from the National Science Foundation, including a $25 million award in 2020 to the multi-universityNSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Present and Future Quantum Computation, which Hudson co-directs. And in 2021, the UCLA center received a five-year,$3 million traineeship grantfor doctoral students from the NSF.

Founded in 2018, the Center for Quantum Science and Engineering draws from the talents and creativity of dozens of faculty members and students.

Boeings support is a huge boost for quantum science and engineering at UCLA, said Mark Gyure, executive director of the center and a UCLA adjunct professor of electrical and computer engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. Enhancing the Center for Quantum Science and Engineering will attract additional world-class faculty in this rapidly growing field and, together with Boeing and other companies in the region, establish Los Angeles and Southern California as a major hub in quantum science and technology.

Go here to see the original:
$5 million from Boeing will support UCLA quantum science and technology research | UCLA - UCLA Newsroom

Author: Dr. Sarah Kaiser and Dr. Chris GranadePublisher: ManningDate: June 2021Pages: 384ISBN: 978-1617296130Print:1617296139Kindle:B098BNK1T9Audience: Developers interested in quantum computingRating: 4.5Reviewer: Mike JamesQuantum - it's the future...

...or not, depending on your view of the idea. The idea is fairly simple even if the implementation turns out to be next to impossible. Quantum Mechanics is a strange theory, but it is one that seems to work, and the idea of using its insights to compute things is fairly reasonable. After all, QM is the way the world works things out as it creates reality. This book is an attempt to convey the ideas of quantum computing to the average programmer with minimal math. I say minimal because getting the idea isn't really possible without math and implementing the ideas involves math, so you can't avoid it.

I started off with the idea that this task, quantum computing with minimal math wasn't doable and at the end of reading the book I'm even more convinced that it isn't the way to go. Quantum computing is, as already suggested, heavy on math. If you can't handle the math then you are going to have a tough time understanding what is going on. More to the point, ideas that I have in my head that are summarized by math occupy pages of the book that avoids that math. Far from being more complex, the math makes it simpler and provides shortcuts to thinking that makes thinking about it actually possible.

I have to say that my BSc degree was heavy on QM and more recently I did an advanced course on quantum computing, so I was expecting this book to be a quick read and a refresher. Far from it. I had to read, and re-read several times, descriptions of things that I thought I knew in an effort to make the connection between the long descriptions and the simple math in my head. I'm sure that this is going to be the experience of many readers who lack the math in the head and are trying to see the general principles in the very wordy explanations. This is not the book's fault. If there could be a book that did the job this would be it - well written with a dash of humour, interest and passion - but I don't think it works.

The first section is called Getting Started and this is a very slow and gentle intro to the basics of what quantum computing is all about - qubits, states, randomness and so on. The examples are quantum encryption, key distribution, non-local games and teleportation. They all sound exciting, but the reality is fairly simple once you get the idea. All of the programs in this section are in Python.

Part 2 is about algorithms and it is expressed in Q#. On balance I think that the entire book would be better just using Q#, but it's a matter of opinion. A whole chapter is devoted to the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm which, if you understand QM, is one of the easiest of the quantum algorithms to understand. It is also the simplest such algorithm that shows an advantage over a classical algorithm. It took me a short time to understand using the math when I first encountered it, but here it took me some hours to dig thought the non-math explanation and at the end I still don't think that you get the idea that its all based on parity. Classically parity is difficult to measure, but in QM its a natural measurement.

Part 3 is called Applied Quantum Computing and I was looking forward to this because the only really deep quantum algorithms I learned back in the day were Grover's and Shor's. I was hoping to broaden my horizons. The first chapter covers quantum annealing and this was interesting because it's not a mainstream area of quantum computing but one that has many practical applications. The only problem is quantum annealing is really too close to quantum analog computing for my tastes. It is basically a universal quantum simulator that can solve many ground state problems - invaluable but not inspiring. After this I encountered two more algorithms - Grover's and Shor's. Well, yes, any book on quantum computing has to cover them, but there is nothing else. Are we really expending huge efforts on building quantum computers just to implement two algorithms? My guess is that the answer is no - we are expending huge effort to run just Shor's algorithm so that we can crack codes. This book does little to convince me that quantum computers have much more to offer, but I hope I'm wrong.

My final verdict is that this is about as good a non-math-oriented introduction to quantum computing gets. Be warned, there are equations and mathematics that keep peeking through at every turn. You cannot avoid it, but you don't need much math to cope. What I would conclude, however, is that it is much easier to learn the math first and then learn the QM that is needed for quantum computing. In my opinion the math makes it easier.

To keep up with our coverage of books for programmers, follow@bookwatchiprogon Twitteror subscribe to IProgrammer'sBooksRSSfeedfor each day's new addition to Book Watch and for new reviews.

See the article here:
Learn Quantum Computing with Python and Q# - iProgrammer

BT is trialling a new hyper-sensitive quantum radio receiver that could boost the capabilities of 5G and Internet of Things (IoT) networks by reducing energy consumption and boosting coverage.

The receivers use excited atoms to achieve 100 times greater sensitivity than conventional radio equipment thanks to a quantum effect called electromagnetically induced transparency that forms a highly sensitive electric field detector.

Because the atomic radio frequency (RF) receivers are more sensitive, they could be deployed in areas where its impractical or not cost-effective to deploy mobile infrastructure. This would make nationwide 5G coverage a reality.

Meanwhile lower energy consumption would transform the economics of massive IoT projects that rely on long battery life.

The longer an IoT device can be left in the field without needing to be touched or replaced, the greater the return on investment.

BTs engineers successfully sent digitally-encoded messages using the technology via EEs 3.6GHz spectrum. The use of commercially-licensed frequencies could accelerate the timetable for the receivers to be used in the real world. Researchers are now working to miniaturise the equipment and find the optimum frequency modulation and signal processing so it can be used in the future.

BTs investment in cutting edge R&D plays a central role in ensuring the UK remains a network technology leader, said Howard Watson, BT chief technology officer (CTO). Our programme has huge potential to boost the performance of our next generation EE network and deliver an even better service to our customers. Although its early days for the technology, were proud to be playing an instrumental role in developing cutting edge science.

BTs interest in quantum technology has seen it and Toshiba build the worlds first commercial quantum-secured metro network using standard fibre cables in London.

The UK government has expressed a desire to be at the forefront of the field, believing quantum computing can play a vital role in the connected economy and accelerate Industrial Internet of things (IIoT) deployments. A National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC) is expected to open in 2022 as part of the 1 billion National Quantum Technologies Programme.

See original here:
BT tests quantum radio receivers that could boost 5G coverage - TechRadar

The D-Wave Advantage quantum system.

LOS ANGELES (May 12, 2022) USC and D-Wave Systems Inc. are launching the first 5,000+ qubit D-Wave quantum computing system physically located in the United States, designed for academic researchers, government users, and business clients, the Advantage quantum system. Other systems are located in Germany and Canada.

As part of the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center (QCC) hosted at the USC Viterbi School of Engineerings Information Sciences Institute (ISI), the Advantage system is accessible via the Leap quantum cloud service.

The new system contains the Advantage performance update released in October 2021, featuring the highly connected Pegasus topology and 5,000+ qubits.

The D-Wave Advantage quantum annealer is the largest scale programmable quantum information processor currently available anywhere, said Daniel Lidar, holder of the Viterbi Professorship of Engineering at USC, and the scientific and technical director of QCC.

At ISI we want to be at the forefront of new technologies, and to explore all the possibilities. We are excited to be pioneers in research on quantum computing, and to advance this field so that companies can harness the power of this emerging technology for themselves, said Craig Knoblock, Michael Keston executive director of ISI.

The Advantage system provides a four-fold increase in the number of qubits from our previous system as well as increased coherence and other performance metrics, Lidar said. We have great hopes for the new system as we explore coherent quantum annealing to achieve quantum speedups in quantum simulation, best-in-class optimization and machine learning. Some of our first projects will be to investigate speedup over classical optimization methods for hard optimization problems as well as pursuing additional government-funded research for identification and classification of quantum phase transitions.

Through QCC, USC is currently one of the first universities in the world to host and operate a commercial quantum computing system. The launch of the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center in 2011 was followed by similar investments by Google and NASA the following year.

Quantum Information Science (QIS) is a top priority research area for the nation and has long been a focus of USC Viterbi said Yannis C. Yortsos, dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. In collaboration with Lockheed Martin, we established at ISI in 2011 the first academic home for a quantum computing system, namely D-Wave One.

USC faculty have mentored a new generation of Ph.D. students in QIS, who now have leadership positions in academia and the industry, Yortsos noted. The school has also established a new MS degree in QIS, with current worldwide student demand growing steadily.

For more than a decade, research and education in QIS at USC Viterbi has been thriving and constantly growing, Yortsos said.

The upgrade to Advantage offers multiple benefits for users. It will enable researchers to continue studying how quantum effects may speed up the solution of complex optimization, machine learning and sampling problems, and new breakthrough results in quantum optimization.

Businesses will benefit from the commercial use-cases that can be run on the quantum hybrid solver service. Government agencies and researchers also will have access to one of the most advanced systems in the United States for tackling key public sector initiatives including electrical grid resilience, emergency response and infrastructure optimization projects.

As a part of the D-Wave Leap quantum cloud service, users will immediately be able to access the Advantage quantum computer located at USC in real-time. Leap access gives researchers, government agencies and enterprises access to all of the programming tools and hybrid quantum-classical resources offered through Leap. This system will also be available today for use in Amazon Braket, Amazons quantum computing service.

To date, D-Waves customers have developed hundreds of early quantum applications in an array of fields such as financial modeling, flight planning, quantum chemistry simulation, automotive engineering, health care, logistics and more.

Making quantum computing ubiquitous and available is one of our core areas of focus and is central to the commercialization of quantum computing, said Alan Baratz, CEO of D-Wave. This is an important moment for our U.S.-based customers who want their Leap cloud access to the newest Advantage system and quantum hybrid solver service to be in region.

Eleven years ago, together with Lockheed Martin, we installed our first quantum system at USC, Baratz added. Fast forward to today, delivering one of the most performant commercial quantum computers in the world yet again allows users to harness the power of annealing quantum computing for real-world optimization problems, all accessible real-time through our Leap quantum cloud service and in AWSs Amazon Braket.

Published on May 12th, 2022

Last updated on May 12th, 2022

Read the original:
USC ISI works with D-Wave to house one of the First US-Based Advantage Quantum Computer - USC Viterbi | School of Engineering - USC Viterbi School of...

New VC Investments at Classiq, Universal Quantum, and Qunasys

Three new venture capital investments have been announced within the past few days. The first is an investment of an additional $3 million in Classiq from strategic investors HSBC, NTT, and Neva SGR. This brings the Series B total to $36 million and total funding the company has received so far to $51 million. Strategic investor funding is important because these organizations can not only provide funds, but they can also become customers of a company. In this case, NTT is already a customers and HSBC and Neva SGRs parent company,the Intesa Sanpaolo Group the leading Italian bank in Europe, could have broad usage of quantum computing technology in the future. Yuval Boger, Chief Marketing Officer at Classiq, states, These additional funds will help us build a large community of quantum experts and quantum explorers that are eager to harness Classiqs unique approach to creating quantum software towards solving real business problems. Classiqs press release announcing this investment can be accessed here.

Quantum Exponential, a publicly held investment organization, has invested 450,000 ($551K USD) through an Advanced Subscription Agreement in Universal Quantum. Universal Quantums is working to develop practical quantum computers using microwave trapped ion technology that uses long-wavelength radiation and locally applied magnetic fields to replace the vast amounts of individually controlled laser beams used in other ion trap implementations. Their goal is to develop to the worlds first million qubit quantum computer. A press release from Quantum Exponential announcing this investment can be found here.

Finally, Mitsubishi Electrics ME Innovation Fund has announced an investment in Tokyo based QunaSys for an undisclosed amount. Qunasys was founded in early 2018 by researchers from the University of Tokyo, Osaka University, and Kyoto University and develops applications using quantum computing with a focus on quantum chemistry, quantum machine learning and optimization. Qunasys also helps to manage the QPARC industry consortium to help partners learn about quantum computers. A new release from Mitsubishi Electric announcing this investment is available here.

May 16, 2022

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Read more here:
New VC Investments at Classiq, Universal Quantum, and Qunasys - Quantum Computing Report