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Every few years IBM brings out a new addition to its Z series mainframe family. From the information accompanying the release of the new enterprise system, IBM appears to be touting the new z16 machines ability to handle real time fraud detection for instant payments across the financial sector. It also offers an AI (artificial intelligence) accelerator, using IBMs Telum chip. This will certainly be good news for many financial institutes. For instance, speaking at a recent IBM-hosted roundtable, Steve Suarez, global head of innovation, finance & risk at HSBC, described how the bank was drowning in data. Suarez sees a need to have technology that can help the bank provide insights that actually benefit people.

What is interesting from the virtual z16 briefing Computer Weekly attended is IBMs focus on the new machines ability to protect against hackers using quantum computing to break the strong encryption that underpins financial transactions.

IBM distinguished engineer, Anne Dames said: Good technology can be used to do bad things. In other words, a quantum computer could be used to break the cryptographic keys that are used to encrypt data.

We are entering a new cryptographic era, she warns, adding that the IT industry needs to act now before there is an effective quantum computing based attack.

The worst case scenario IBM paints is where a successful hacking attack gains access to a large quantity of encrypted data. Since this data is encrypted, it is near impossible to decipher it in a realistic timescale. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology warns that if large-scale quantum computers are ever built, they will be able to break many of the public-key cryptosystems currently in use. This would seriously compromise the confidentiality and integrity of digital communications on the Internet and elsewhere. Nist is encouraging the IT sector to develop post-quantum cryptography and IBMs z16 is one of the first systems to claim it is quantum safe.

While this is clearly an important development and IBMs efforts should be applauded, one cant help worrying that IBM, Nist and the IT sector at large, are somehow missing the bigger picture. Breaking cryptography is one thing, but quantum computers have the potential to revolutionise drug development and the ability to create new chemical processes such as to reduce carbon emissions. The flip side is that these techniques may also be used to develop devastatingly effective, targeted chemical and biological weapons. As such, policy makers need to wake up to the risk, and track quantum computing in the same way that atomic, biological and chemical weapon materials are monitored.

More:
Quantum computing and the bigger picture - ComputerWeekly.com

In an interview during his recent visit to India,Gilsaid he also metsome government officials including Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for electronics and information technology, with whom he shared how IBM could help create a national quantum plan in India.Gilalso explained how enterprises and governments can benefit from technologies such as the hybrid cloud, edge computing, quantum computing, and shared his thoughts on Web3. Edited excerpts:

IBM outlined its commitment almost five years back to grow a quantum ready workforce and build an ecosystem to nurture the community in India. What's the progress?

We have made tremendous amount of progress and in fact, it was one of their core aspects of the discussion with the minister (Rajeev Chandrashekar) that I had. They intend to make sure that India is a powerhouse in the world of quantum skills and quantum technologies. In this context, access to the technology is crucial. That's why we're committed to the open-source environment--the most-widely one used around the world is Qiskit. We're seeing tremendous adoption in terms of advocates and quantum ambassadors here in India, and we're also having many conversations right now with different IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) and leading centers for training, to develop a curriculum, and certification. The Qiskit (to learn quantum computation) textbook is now also available in Tamil, Bengali and Hindi. We're going to be running many workshops and lots of programs around it. I think there's a tremendous opportunity and part of our commitment is to figure out a way to grow these broad-based skills and talent programming in India for quantum.

Whats the progress on quantum computers, and how do they currently compare with supercomputers?

Most of the computation will continue to run on classical computers whether in CPUs (central processing units) or accelerators (GPUs or gaming processor units), or AI, but there are several important problems that are very well suited for quantum computers. One of them is the dimension of simulating and modeling our world.It turns out there are also mathematical problems of great importance that are well suited to quantum computers such as cryptography and factoring. Blockchain, crypto, and other such technologies are going to have to be adapt and change because of the advances of quantum.

We have over 180 institutions that are part of the IBM Quantum Network and they include some of the largest corporations in the world from the financial sector like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo, Mizuho Bank, and others such as Daimler and also big energy companies in the oil and gas sector, and some materials companies. Theres also a huge appetite in university and students with research laboratories participating in this.

But when will the world get to see a stable quantum computer that will work around current limitations such as noise leading to higher error rates, interference, etc.?

We already have quantum computers but they, as you correctly pointed out, have limitations. We still haven't crossed the threshold of quantum advantage (the so-called quantum advantage or quantum supremacy is a point when a quantum system performs functions that today's classical computers cannot) but they are quantum computers, nonetheless. We have built over 30 of them in the last 4-5 years, of which over 20 quantum computers are active right now with IBM providing access to them through the IBM Cloud. Every day we run three-and-a-half billion quantum circuits, running on actual quantum hardware.

The roadmap we shared is that in the first year we will build 100 qubit quantum computer, this year, we're going to build a 433 qubit machine and next year, a machine with over a 1000 qubits (A quantum computer comprises quantum bits or qubits that can encode a one and a zero simultaneously. This property allows them to process a lot more information than traditional computers, and at unimaginable speeds.).

The error rate of the qubits is also improving tremendously (we can get to 10 to the minus 4 error rates). And the algorithms and software--the techniques we use for error mitigation and error correction--is also improving. If you combine all of this, (and) if you want to be conservative, we're going to see quantum advantage this decade.

Whats the roadmap for quantum computing?

We have seen AI-centric or GPU-centric supercomputers, and we are most definitely going to see quantum-centric supercomputers. This is how it may work out. Imagine a quantum computer with hundreds or thousands of qubits with a single cryostat (Heat creates error in qubits hence they need to be cooled to near absolute zero in a device called a cryostat that contains liquid helium), and now imagine a quantum data center with multiple cryostats in a data center.You could build a data center that has thousands or tens of thousands of qubits but the connection between these different cryostats in the first generation is classical. If you're smart enough to take a problem and partition the problem in such a way that you can run parallel workloads in the quantum machines and then connect them and stick them classically, you still incur an exponential cost in the classical piece but can still get to a good answer.The next step is to combine the field of quantum communications and quantum computing. It's a roadmap over the next 10-20 years, but we will see quantum supercomputers and they are going to work in concert with the current supercomputers.

I would now like to segue into how the adoption of hybrid cloud has increased in enterprises, and its evolution both from a market and research point of view.

From a market lens, if you look at any kind of medium-size or large-scale business (from a market lens), this reality (of a hybrid cloud) is there. Simply put, the question is how to make the hybrid cloud strategy work and continue to modernize the infrastructure so that the workloads and processes run optimally across it. That's explains why the open-source component and the acquisition of Red Hat was so crucialto have an operating system based on Linux and having a container architecture based on Kubernetes. This is a $1 trillion plus annual market opportunity for us to provide the middleware, infrastructure, and right skills through IBM Consulting to help our clients operate and succeed in that environment.

From a computer science lens, we have seen the huge importance of edge computing and if you look beyond, you will also see the heterogeneous nature of architectures based on microprocessor-centric architectures like the AI accelerator-centric architectures and quantum-centric architectures in the future. So, its critical to build a very heterogeneous, very distributed, computational environment and ensure it is architected properly and works.

Speaking about AI, even as big data is important, there is much effort to do a lot more with less data.

Yeah, it's true. One extreme continues to be a story of how you learn from large amounts of data--we're talking about taking advantage of advances in self supervision to be able to train large foundational models, and a good example is in NLP (Natural Language Processing). But the challenge our clients have had with AI is that the data science portion of itthe data labeling and training pipeline consumes 90% of the resources and (also consumes) a lot of time. So, anything we can do to reduce this is hugely important. Then there's another vector--how do you inherently learn from less with much fewer examples, with few short learnings, and so on? This is an area where we invest a lot.

Semiconductors is another critical part of IBM Research. In May 2021, IBM announced its second-generation nanosheet technology has paved a path to the 2 nm node. Please explain the significance of this development.

The topic of semiconductors today has become a national and international priority. I meet with government leaders around the world and now, politicians and citizens are realizing the importance of semiconductors because they (semiconductors) are literally in everything cars, refrigerators, phones, and computers. The semiconductor industry is a half-a-trillion-dollar industry. By all accounts, this is going to double in size in the coming decade. To enable that growth, innovation and manufacturing capability must go hand in hand.IBM plays a central role on the innovation side in creating the new technology that enables manufacturers to bring that capability to the world at scale. As an example, the announcement last year on the 2 nanometer technology is incredibly exciting because there's almost nothing more impactful than a next generation transistor (allows a chip to fit up to 50 billion transistors in a space that is the size of a fingernail). We also recently (in December 2021) announced the Vertical FieldEffect transistor, or the VTFETa design aimed at enabling smaller, more powerful, and energy-efficient devices. Of course, we use the expertise we have in semiconductor technology to build quantum computing as well.

Whats your role as a member of the National Science Board?

The National Science Board is the entity that is the governing board of the National Science Foundation (NSF) of the United States. It funds a very significant part of all the basic science work. The characteristic of that funding is that it is curiosity driven, and not driven by application.It's about advancing the frontiers of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology, and is hugely important that we, as societies, defend and support the need for that kind of discovery. Without that investment, it (discovery) takes many decades.

Before we wrap up, I would love to have your thoughts on Web 3.0 and metaversethe two buzzwords that are currently taking the industry by storm.

I like to see the foundations of these areas. On Web 3.0, it's back to the computer science story.It's about how we build the next generation of truly distributed computational environments. We touched on this lens from the perspective of a hybrid cloud. But this is complementary to that because it is about: How do you build in this case a web architecture and a network architecture that is inherently distributed by design? This requires thinking about a lot of foundation things--right from the security dimension to the semantic nature of the relationship around that. The previous version (of the web) was all about interactivity. Now it's also about how we bring together sensors and the fact that we have computers everywhere, and humans interacting with it. So, it's this next generation architecture I think is fundamental.

As for the metaverse, maybe Im not the most qualified person to talk about it, (but) obviously it's going to be a hugely important way to extend the way we entertain and collaborate. (But) I really would like that technology is also oriented towards (solving a) broader set of problems.

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india Aims To Be Powerhouse In The World Of Quantum Skills | Mint - Mint

The Pentagon in Arlington, Va., as seen on Sept. 17, 2021. (Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg)

The U.S. Department of Defense's outgoing chief data officer called for the Pentagon to make urgent investments to defend against potential espionage from quantum computers -- nascent technology that could one day break the encryption that protects American secrets.

In his first interview since leaving his post last month, David Spirk, who spent two years in his role, told Bloomberg News that the Pentagon needs to speed up efforts to counter adversaries who are developing military tools supported by advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and eventually quantum science.

Quantum computing may prove far more able than existing technology to solve mathematical problems at exponentially faster speeds. That could enable operators to unscramble the algorithms that underpin encryption protocols, unlocking an array of sensitive data.

"I don't think that there's enough senior leaders getting their heads around the implications of quantum," Spirk said. "Like AI, I think that's a new wave of compute that when it arrives is going to be a pretty shocking moment to industry and government alike."

"We have to pick up pace because we have competitors who are also attempting to accelerate," he added.

Spirk's comments come amid warnings that U.S. adversaries, particularly China, are aggressively pursuing advanced technologies that could radically accelerate the pace of modern warfare. China is investing in AI and quantum sciences as part of its plan to become an innovation superpower, according to the Pentagon's latest annual report to Congress on China's military power. China is "at or near the lead on numerous science fields," including AI and quantum, it said.

The National Security Agency, meanwhile, said last year that the adversarial use of a quantum computer "could be devastating" to the U.S. and its national security systems. The NSA said it could take 20 years or more to roll out new post-quantum cryptography that would resist such code-cracking.

Tim Gorman, a spokesperson at the Pentagon, said the Department of Defense was taking post-quantum cryptography seriously and coordinating with Congress and across government agencies. He added there was "a significant effort" underway.

A January presidential memo further charged agencies with establishing a timeline for transitioning to quantum resistant cryptography.

Among the efforts underway to bolster defenses against quantum-based attacks, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, known as NIST, is seeking to select new quantum-proof encryption algorithms from seven finalists shortly as part of a global competition.

Jonathan Katz, computer science professor at the University of Maryland who submitted a "post-quantum algorithm" to the NIST competition, said the stakes in the NIST competition were high: an algorithm that later proved vulnerable would be "a disaster." Once a choice is made, the U.S. Department of Defense faces a huge task in upgrading all its software and hardware that features algorithms, he said, adding that included not only servers and laptops but also parts of submarines, tanks, helicopters and weapons systems.

Experts generally assess large-scale quantum computing may be 15 to 20 years away if it is ever even developed, but the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Agency, or DARPA, launched a project this February to explore the possibility that a breakthrough could be developed "much sooner."

Joe Altepeter, who manages DARPA's new quantum project, told Bloomberg there was a lot of "hype" over industry claims about the arrival of quantum computing, with several "hardware miracles" still standing in the way. Some of the smartest physicists he knew were divided over whether useful quantum computing would ever exist, Altepeter said, adding that the risk was such that it was important to develop resilient systems.

Spirk said the Pentagon needs to start preparing "now," arguing military applications for quantum computing could be only five to 10 years away. The Pentagon needed to work at the same speed as commercial vendors that are already exploring ways to use quantum-resistant cryptography to safeguard financial and health-care sectors, he said.

If the U.S. doesn't make the right investments in defensive quantum today, "then our concepts around encryption, data security and cybersecurity will be obsolete because the computers will break our cryptography," Spirk said. He added that all the encrypted data that adversaries have already gathered would also risk exposure.

Spirk, a former U.S. Marine, became the first chief data officer at Special Operations Command before he joined the Pentagon. He said he left the chief data officer post after a two-year commitment to rejoin his family in Florida. The departure follows last year's resignation of the U.S. Air Force's first chief software officer, Nicolas Chaillan, who previously told the Financial Times that the U.S. was losing the AI race to China.

Visit link:
Pentagon's outgoing data boss warns of quantum cyber threats - Stars and Stripes

Yales hub for quantum research will soon entangle the campus in the best possible sense in a full week of mind-bending science, artistry, and discussion devoted to the wonders of quantum research.

Quantum Week at Yale, organized by the Yale Quantum Institute (YQI), will feature a hackathon, a lab tour, a movie screening, a record launch party, hands-on computer programming, a superconductive jewelry display, and an assortment of quantum-related library and museum exhibits.

The activities begin April 8 and run through April 14. A full list of events is availablehere.

Yales quantum scientists are at the very top of this field, said Florian Carle, YQI manager and coordinator for the event. We want to take some of the excitement we see in the labs and at YQI and share it with the rest of the campus.

Quantum science delves into the physical properties that explain the behavior of subatomic particles, atoms, and molecules. Over the past century, quantum research has transformed disciplines as diverse as physics, engineering, mathematics, chemistry, computer science, and materials science.

Over the past 20 years, Yale researchers have propelled quantum research, particularly in quantum information science and quantum computing, with a series of groundbreaking discoveries including the first demonstration of two-qubit algorithms with a superconducting quantum processor.

Yales research has led to unprecedented control over individual quantum objects, whether those objects are naturally occurring microscopic systems such as atoms, or macroscopic, human-made systems with engineered properties. Researchers say these advances may soon enable them to perform otherwise intractable computations, ensure privacy in communications, better understand and design novel states of matter, and develop new types of sensors and measurement devices.

This is the time when computer scientists, mathematicians, physicists, and engineers are all coming together, said Yongshan Ding, assistant professor of computer science, who will lead a programming workshop on April 14 that shows visitors including those without any experience with quantum computing how to play with quantum interference patterns.

People can just code away, Ding said. My vision is that by exposing people to these activities, we can build a quantum-native programming language. This is a new paradigm of computation, so were going to need new ways to program for it.

YQI has partnered with 18 Yale departments and centers to create 23 events for Quantum Week at Yale. One of the challenges in organizing the week, Carle explained, was developing an engaging mix of activities suited for both experienced researchers and quantum science novices.

To that end, the week is organized around four components: Understanding Quantum, Art & Quantum, Career and Entrepreneurship, and For Researchers.

The hands-on programming event, for example, comes under the Understanding Quantum banner. Other include an April 9-10 Quantum Coalition Hack, hosted by the Yale Undergraduate Quantum Computer Club; an April 11 tour of superconducting qubit laboratories; and a quantum-related exhibit of rare books at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library on April 11.

Were always looking for ways that our libraries can engage with the academic work going on at Yale, said Andrew Shimp, who consulted on Quantum Week events at Yale libraries. Shimp is Yales librarian for engineering, applied science, chemistry, and mathematics. One of the unique things a Yale library can offer is the chance to view rare collections that arent necessarily digitized yet.

The quantum exhibit at the Beinecke Library, for example, includes materials from quantum science pioneers such as Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, and Max Planck. There is also an astronomy textbook, published in 1511, that includes the word quantum in its title. The title is Textus de Sphera Johannis de Sacrobosco: cum additione (quantum necessarium est) adiecta / Nouo commentario nuper edito ad vtilitate[m] studentiu[m] philosophice Parisien[em]. A brief English translation would be Sphere of Sacrobosco.

Under the Art & Quantum heading, there will be an April 8 screening of the 2013 indie thriller Coherence; a visual arts competition called Visualize Science hosted by Wright Lab on April 13; a launch party for Quantum Sound (a record project begun at YQI in 2018) on April 13; a display of Superconductive Jewelry throughout the week at YQI; a Quantum and the Arts exhibit all week at the Arts Library; an April 13 event hosted by the Yale Schwarzman Center devoted to historical preservation of technology ephemera, called Dumpster Diving: Historical Memory and Quantum Physics at Yale; and a new exhibit at the New Haven Museum, The Quantum Revolution, that opens April 13 and features drawings by former YQI artist in residence Martha Willette Lewis.

Carle is curator for the New Haven Museum exhibit. We wanted to show the evolution of quantum science at Yale, he said. It will take people from some of the first qubits in 1998 to Badger, the dilution refrigerator that ran the first two-qubit algorithms with a superconducting quantum processor in 2009.

Quantum computers require extremely cold temperatures near absolute zero in order to reduce operational errors.

The weeks Career and Entrepreneurship component will include a discussion of quantum startups hosted by The Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (Tsai CITY) on April 12; a conversation with IBMs Mark Ritter on the global implications of quantum research, hosted by the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs on April 12; a session on how to access market research for major industry analysts, hosted by the Yale University Library, on April 12; and a series of panel discussions on how to join the quantum workforce.

Finally, the For Researchers component of Quantum Week at Yale will feature a quantum sensing workshop at Wright Lab on April 8; and an April 14 lecture by quantum researcher Nathan Wiebe of the University of Washington.

The final day for Quantum Week at Yale, April 14, also happens to be World Quantum Day, Carle said. Our hope is that by then, students all over campus will be aware of quantum work being done here and want to explore it themselves in some way.

Originally posted here:
Quantum Week at Yale geared toward novices and experts alike - India Education Diary

image:Prof. Dr. Symeon CHATZINOTAS view more

Credit: University of Luxembourg

The University of Luxembourg's Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT), in collaboration with the Department of Media, Connectivity and Digital Policy (SMC) of the Ministry of State, today announces the development of the Luxembourg Quantum Communication Infrastructure Laboratory (LUQCIA). The 5-year project is funded by the European Unions Recovery and Resilience Facility in the context of the NextGenerationEU initiative, and will aim to build a national testbed in 2023 to enable advanced and applied research in quantum key distribution and quantum internet a vital stage in the next generation of computing and internet usage.

Luxembourg wants to remain the state-of-the-art communication hub it has become over the last decade. That is why we have taken it upon ourselves, through SnTs scientific leadership, to lay the groundwork for tomorrows quantum communication infrastructure, stated Prime Minister and Minister for Communication and Media, Xavier Bettel.

The Minister of Finance, Yuriko Backes, commented: I would like to pay particular tribute to the pioneering role of SnT, in collaboration with the SMC, in the development of quantum communication technologies. It is one of the national Recovery and Resilience Plans key measures for the digital transition. The EU funds will actively support Luxembourg to improve the security of public sector communications as part of a wider European project.

The LUQCIA infrastructure will give University of Luxembourg researchers unique tools to optimise cybersecurity for the upcoming quantum communication technology, stated the rector of the University of Luxembourg, Stphane Pallage.

Future-proofing secure communication

Most of the data we exchange over the internet is secured through keys that encrypt and decrypt information. As computers are made with increasingly greater computing power, the time it takes for a hacker to be able to break this encryption becomes shorter and shorter. However, an emerging field of cybersecurity called quantum key distribution (QKD) aims to better secure our data even against quantum computers an upcoming generation of extremely powerful computers that, when launched on a wide scale, could leave our information wide open to attackers.

LUQCIA aims to develop and implement an ultra-secure communication infrastructure based on quantum technology. The aim is to connect at least two geographical sites within the LUQCIA research infrastructure. LUQCIA will rely primarily on a terrestrial network and will integrate the space segment through follow-up activities.

Developing a robust quantum communication infrastructure leveraging both terrestrial and satellite optical links will guarantee the security of our data in our communications network well into our future. It will also help to realise the future of a quantum internet by interconnecting high-performance quantum computers, said Principal Investigator of the project, Prof. Symeon Chatzinotas.

Once up and running in 2023, the LUQCIA lab will be open to national and international stakeholders for joint research activities in the framework of SnTs Partnership Programme.

About SnT

The Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) at the University of Luxembourg conducts internationally competitive research in information and communication technology. In addition to long-term, high-risk research,SnTengages in demand-driven collaborative projects with industry and the public sector through its PartnershipProgramme. The resulting concepts present a genuine, long-lasting competitive advantage for companies in Luxembourg and beyond.www.snt.uni.lu

About the University of Luxembourg

The University of Luxembourg is an international research university with a distinctly multilingual and interdisciplinary character. The University was founded in 2003 and counts nearly 7,000 students and over 2,000 employees from around the world. The Universitys faculties and interdisciplinary centres focus on research in the areas of Computer Science and ICT Security, Materials Science, European and International Law, Finance and Financial Innovation, Education, Contemporary and Digital History. In addition, the University focuses on cross-disciplinary research in the areas of Data Modelling and Simulation as well as Health and System Biomedicine. The University of Luxembourg offers 17 Bachelors, 46 Masters Degrees and custom-made training programmes for Ph.D. candidates in 4 doctoral schools. Times Higher Education ranks the University of Luxembourg #3 worldwide for its international outlook, #25 in the Young University Ranking 2022 and among the top 250-300 universities worldwide. http://www.uni.lu

About the Recovery and Resilience Facility

As part of a wide-ranging response, the aim of the Recovery and Resilience Facility is to mitigate the economic and social impact of the coronavirus pandemic and make European economies and societies more sustainable, resilient and better prepared for the challenges and opportunities of the green and digital transitions. The RRF helps the EU achieve its target of climate neutrality by 2050 and sets Europe on a path of digital transition, creating jobs and spurring growth in the process. Luxembourgs recovery and resilience plan contains 20 measures (8 reforms and 12 investments) which will help the country become more sustainable, resilient and better prepared for the challenges and opportunities of the green and digital transitions. Those measures will be financed by93millionin grants.61%of the plan will supportclimate objectivesand32%will foster thedigital transition.

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University's SnT to build the first testbed for quantum communication infrastructure in Luxembourg - EurekAlert