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Quantum computing has come a long way since its first introduction in the 1980s. Researchers have always been on a lookout for a better way to enhance the ability of quantum computing systems, whether it is in making it cheaper or the quest of making the present quantum computers last longer. With the latest technological advancements in the world of quantum computing which superconducting bits, a new way of improving the world of silicon quantum computing has come to light, making use of the silicon spin qubits for better communication.

Until now, the communication between different qubits was relatively slow. It could be done by passing the messages to the next bit to get the communication over to another chip at a relatively far distance.

Now, researches at Princeton University have explored the idea of two quantum computing silicon components known as silicon spin qubits interacting in a relatively spaced environment, that is with a relatively large distance between them. The study was presented in the journal Nature on December 25, 2019.

The silicon quantum spin qubits give the ability to the quantum hardware to interact and transmit messages across a certain distance which will provide the hardware new capabilities. With transmitting signals over a distance, multiple quantum bits can be arranged in two-dimensional grids that can perform more complex calculations than the existing hardware of quantum computers can do. This study will help in better communications of qubits not only on a chip but also from one to another, which will have a massive impact on the speed.

The computers require as many qubits as possible to communicate effectively with each other to take the full advantage of quantum computings capabilities. The quantum computer that is used by Google and IBM contains around 50 qubits which make use of superconducting circuits. Many researchers believe that silicon-based qubit chips are the future in quantum computing in the long run.

The quantum state of silicon spin qubits lasts longer than the superconducting qubits, which is one of their significant disadvantages (around five years). In addition to lasting longer, silicon which has a lot of application in everyday computers is cheaper, another advantage over the superconducting qubits because these cost a ton of money. Single qubit will cost around $10,000, and thats before you consider research and development costs. With these costs in mind a universal quantum computer hardware alone will be around at least $10bn.

But, silicon spin cubits have their challenges which are part of the fact that they are incredibly small, and by small we mean, these are made out from a single electron. This problem is a huge factor when it comes to establishing an interconnect between multiple qubits when building a large scale computer.

To counter the problem of interconnecting these extremely small silicon spin qubits, the Princeton team connected these qubits with a wire which are similar to the fibre optic (for internet delivery at houses) wires and these wires carry light. This wire contains photon that picks up a message from a single qubit and transmits it the next qubit. To understand this more accurately, if the qubits are placed at a distance of half-centimetre apart from each other for the communication, in real-world, it would be like these qubits are around 750 miles away.

The next step forward for the study was to establish a way of getting qubits and photons to communicate the same language by tuning both the qubits and the photon to the same frequency. Where previously the devices architecture allowed tuning only one qubit to one photon at a time, the team now succeeded in tuning both the qubits independent from each other while still coupling them to the photon.

You have to balance the qubit energies on both sides of the chip with the photon energy to make all three elements talk to each other,

Felix Borjans, a graduate student and first author on the study on what he describes as the challenging part of the work.

The researchers demonstrated entangling of electrons spins in silicon separated by distances more substantial than the device housing, this was a significant development when it comes to wiring these qubits and how to lay them out in silicon-based quantum microchips.

The communication between the distant silicon-based qubits devices builds on the works of Petta research team in 2010 which shows how to trap s single electron in quantum wells and also from works in the journal Nature from the year 2012 (transfer of quantum information from electron spins)

From the paper in Science 2016 (demonstrated the ability to transmit information from a silicon-based charge qubit to a photon), from Science 2017 (nearest-neighbour trading of information in qubits) and 2018 Nature (silicon spin qubit can exchange information with a photon).

This demonstration of interactions between two silicon spin qubits is essential for the further development of quantum tech. This demonstration will help technologies like modular quantum computers and quantum networks. The team has employed silicon and germanium, which is widely available in the market.

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How This Breakthrough Makes Silicon-Based Qubit Chips The Future of Quantum Computing - Analytics India Magazine

Scientists at the University of Bristol and the Technical University of Denmark have achieved quantum teleportation between two computer chips for the first time. The team managed to send information from one chip to another instantly without them being physically or electronically connected, in a feat that opens the door for quantum computers and quantum internet.

This kind of teleportation is made possible by a phenomenon called quantum entanglement, where two particles become so entwined with each other that they can communicate over long distances. Changing the properties of one particle will cause the other to instantly change too, no matter how much space separates the two of them. In essence, information is being teleported between them.

Hypothetically, theres no limit to the distance over which quantum teleportation can operate and that raises some strange implications that puzzled even Einstein himself. Our current understanding of physics says that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, and yet, with quantum teleportation, information appears to break that speed limit. Einstein dubbed it spooky action at a distance.

Harnessing this phenomenon could clearly be beneficial, and the new study helps bring that closer to reality. The team generated pairs of entangled photons on the chips, and then made a quantum measurement of one. This observation changes the state of the photon, and those changes are then instantly applied to the partner photon in the other chip.

We were able to demonstrate a high-quality entanglement link across two chips in the lab, where photons on either chip share a single quantum state, says Dan Llewellyn, co-author of the study. Each chip was then fully programmed to perform a range of demonstrations which utilize the entanglement. The flagship demonstration was a two-chip teleportation experiment, whereby the individual quantum state of a particle is transmitted across the two chips after a quantum measurement is performed. This measurement utilizes the strange behavior of quantum physics, which simultaneously collapses the entanglement link and transfers the particle state to another particle already on the receiver chip.

The team reported a teleportation success rate of 91 percent, and managed to perform some other functions that will be important for quantum computing. That includes entanglement swapping (where states can be passed between particles that have never directly interacted via a mediator), and entangling as many as four photons together.

Information has been teleported over much longer distances before first across a room, then 25 km (15.5 mi), then 100 km (62 mi), and eventually over 1,200 km (746 mi) via satellite. Its also been done between different parts of a single computer chip before, but teleporting between two different chips is a major breakthrough for quantum computing.

The research was published in the journal Nature Physics.

Source: University of Bristol

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Information teleported between two computer chips for the first time - New Atlas

If you thought that Legos were the coolest toys on the planet while you were growing up, it turns out that you were right.

Scientists at Lancaster University in England conducted an experimentin which they froze several Lego blocks to the lowest possible temperature, and what they discovered could be useful in the development of quantum computing.

Led by Dr. Dmitry Zmeev, the scientists used a custom-made dilution refrigerator,which the university saysis the most effective refrigerator in the world. The dilution refrigerator at Lancaster University can reach 1.6 millidegrees above absolute zero, or minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 273.15 Celsius). That is 200,000 times colder than room temperature and 2,000 times colder than deep space,according to the university.

The team of scientists placed a Lego figure along with four Lego blocks inside the dilution refrigerator to see if Legos could be a good thermal insulator.

We were trying to find a material that would be a thermal insulator at extremely low temperatures, yet would be relatively strong, Zmeev told CNN.

The Lego blocks looked like good candidates: the contact area between two blocks clamped together is very small, which prompts poor thermal conduction, yet the resulting structure is very robust. And indeed, our measurements confirmed this.

Legos aremade from ABS plastic, or acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. The plastic is known for its strength and durability. Among its other common uses are keys for computer keyboards.

Thermal insulation is critical to cryogenic engineering and low-temperature physics, but the materials for these applications are extremely expensive and are difficult to mold.

The very instrument the experiment was conducted with could benefit from its results. By allowing for a potentially more cost-effective solution to producing dilution refrigerators, using ABS as a thermal insulator in those refrigerators could aid in the development of quantum computing.

Very low temperatures provided by the dilution refrigerator are necessary for the operation of existing quantum computers, such as Googles, to cool down their qubits, Zmeev said.

A qubit is the basic unit of quantum information in quantum computing.

While its unlikely that Lego blocks per se will be used as a part of a quantum computer, weve found the right direction for creating cheap thermal insulators: 3D printing, Zmeev said. Lego is made from ABS plastic and one can also create ABS structures simply by 3D printing them. We are currently studying the properties of such 3D printed structures at ultralow temperatures close to absolute zero.

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Same Plastic That Make Legos Could Also Be The Best Thermal Insulators Used in Quantum Computers - KTLA Los Angeles

These days its easy to bemoan the state of innovation and the dynamism coming from Americas cradle of technological development in Silicon Valley.

The same companies that were praised for reimagining how people organized and accessed knowledge, interacted publicly, shopped for goods and services, conducted business, and even the devices on which all of these things are done, now find themselves criticized for the ways in which theyve abused the tools theyve created to become some of the most profitable and wealthiest ventures in human history.

Before the decade was even half over, the concern over the poverty of purpose inherent in Silicon Valleys inventions were given voice by Peter Thiel a man who has made billions financing the creation of the technologies whose paucity he then bemoaned.

We are no longer living in a technologically accelerating world, Thiel told an audience at Yale University in 2013. There is an incredible sense of deceleration.

In the six years since Thiel spoke to that audience, the only acceleration has been the pace of technologys contribution to the worlds decline.

However, there are some investors who think that the next wave of big technological breakthroughs are just around the corner and that 2020 will be the year that they enter the public consciousness in a real way.

These are the venture capitalists who invest in companies that develop so-called frontier technologies (or deep tech) things like computational biology, artificial intelligence or machine learning, robotics, the space industry, advanced manufacturing using 3D printing, and quantum computing.

Continued advancements in computational power, data management, imaging and sensing technologies, and materials science are bridging researchers ability to observe and understand phenomena with the potential to manipulate them in commercially viable ways.

As a result increasing numbers of technology investors are seeing less risk and more rewards in the formerly arcane areas of investing in innovations.

Established funds will spin up deep tech teams and more funds will be founded to address this market, especially where deep tech meets sustainability, according to Fifty Years investor, Seth Bannon. This shift will be driven from the bottom up (its where the best founder talent is heading) and also from the top down (as more and more institutional LPs want to allocate capital to this space).

In some ways, these investments are going to be driven by political necessity as much as technological advancement, according to Matt Ocko, a managing partner at the venture firm DCVC.

Earlier this year, DCVC closed on $725 million for two investment funds focused on deep technology investing. For Ocko, the geopolitical reality of continuing tensions with China will drive adoption of new technologies that will remake the American industrial economy.

Whether we like it or not, US-government-driven scrutiny of China-based technology will continue in 2020. Less of it will be allowed to be deployed in the US, especially in areas of security, networking, autonomous transportation and space intelligence, writes Ocko, in an email. At the same time, US DoD efforts to streamline procurement processes will result in increasingly tighter partnerships between the DoD and tech sector. The need to bring complex manufacturing, comms, and semiconductor technology home to the US will support a renaissance in distributed manufacturing/advanced manufacturing tech and a strong wave of semiconductor and robotic innovation.

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2020 will be the beginning of the tech industry's radical revisioning of the physical world - TechCrunch

It may be difficult to envision, but there is a potential future be it 10, 20 or even 30 years down the line where humans are able to plan a cozy vacation into space, blast by a series of satellites that now provide them with Internet access and have their most serious illnesses treated by allowing bioengineers to alter their DNA.

Its one possible future that proactive investors, even those in typically reactive institutional settings, have begun to place large and risky bets on becoming a reality.

In April, the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan created a new department called the Teachers Innovation Platform that has a mandate to invest in disruptive tech and made its first big splash in June by backing Elon Musks SpaceX. The pension plan has particular interest in the companys Starlink project, one that aims to fire more than 11,000 satellites into low orbit, interlink them all and have them act as a new provider of Internet connectivity.

For investing ... you want to look 15 to 20 years down the line and say: 'Is this still going to be impacting peoples' lives?

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has put a similar emphasis on investing in disruptive technology, announcing in late 2018 that it had made a private investment in Zoox, a California-based company that aims to operate a fleet of robo-taxis. Only months ago, the pension plan bought US$162 million worth of Skyworks Solutions Inc., a semiconductor firm creating chips that will allow the next wave of phones to work in 5G networks.

As for retail investors, theyve likely never had as many options to hedge their portfolio toward the future. The 2019 IPO market offered them even more, bringing a basket of futuristic options to the market, including Beyond Meat Inc., a producer of plant-based meat, and Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc., the latest brainchild of Richard Branson, which is developing spacecraft that may allow for the development of a space tourism sector.

But the investors buying these stocks arent buying them with the hope that theyll hit their peak in 2020.

You have to recognize the world is changing, said Hans Albrecht, the portfolio manager for Horizons ETFs Industry 4.0 fund. Theres nothing wrong in investing in Pokemon cards if theyre hot now or whatever the latest trend may be, but thats a trade. For investing you want to look 15 to 20 years down the line and say: Is this still going to be impacting peoples lives?

It wont be long, Albrecht suspects, before his coffee maker is able to receive signals from his mug that tell it to begin brewing a new serving once hes three-quarters of the way through his first cup in the morning.

If that scenario sounds too futuristic, its one that only scratches the surface, he said. When hes running low on espresso packages, a chip in his pantry keeping track of stock may be able to automatically order more from Amazon, which at that point, may have implemented one-hour shipping, to ensure hell never run out.

Thousands of consumers already have access to smart home technology through Google Home or Amazon.com Inc.s Alexa, which allow for the linking of devices such as thermostats, lights and televisions. Its advancements in artificial intelligence and edge computing, which will effectively replace the cloud and allow for individual items in a home to process data, that will bring this technology into the future.

Figuring out how to play technology like edge computing which may very well become mainstream in a decade isnt exactly simple.

Investors will have two options: they can bet on the end point user of the technology in Albrechts coffee scenario, that would mean investing in the company that produces the coffee maker or they can look to the firms that are developing the components that power it.

Albrecht leans towards the latter, suggesting that there would be far too much competition among the end point companies while there would only be a handful of leaders on the components side. A company like Analog Devices Inc., may play a central role in the implementation of that technology because its building everything from the sensors and their networks to processors.

Investors may be able to apply similar logic with 5G, according to CIBC World Markets tech strategist Todd Coupland.

Consumers will likely only begin to see the wide rollout of 5G, which would enable devices to operate at speeds that as much as 100 times faster than the current 4G tech, in 2020. That means that it might be a bit early to invest in device producers such as Apple Inc. or Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. for that exposure. Instead, Coupland suggested investors eye a company like Keysight Technologies Inc., which builds the equipment that carriers have been using to test out their services ahead of launch.

Goldman Sachs expects 50 million to 120 million 5G devices to be active in 2020 and if that should be the case, components manufacturers in Qualcomm Inc. and Marvell Technology Group Ltd. may warrant attention as would providers such as Nokia Ovj, which already has 50 deals in place to install its radio access equipment, AirScale, around the world. The equipment supports multiple frequencies and allows for a quick transition over to 5G.

That list doesnt include the Canadian telcos and for good reason.

In Canada, Rogers and Bell, their attitude is: See how it goes in the U.S. and well be at least one year behind, Coupland said.

5Gs full potential likely wont be reached for a decade, he said, and the futuristic possibilities it opens up will likely only be reached in the second half. When combined with the power of quantum computing, managing a fleet of self-driving cars and, who knows, removing traffic lights from the streets becomes a possibility, according to Christian Weedbrook, the CEO of Toronto-based quantum computing company Xanadu.

Weedbrooks company has gained the attention of Georgian Partners, a private-sector venture capital firm that has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in upstart Canadian tech companies.

What makes quantum computing, a draw for Jason Brenier, Georgians vice-president of strategy, is its ability to solve previously unsolvable problems.

Weedbrook imagines a future where quantum computers control hundreds of autonomous vehicles for Uber Inc. or Lyft Inc. and provide each individual car with the fastest route to its destination, analyzing traffic, time a trip perfectly so that red lights can be mostly or completely avoided, and in the case of a pool scenario, figure out how to do that with multiple stops.

Investing in early stage technology comes with its challenges. Because Georgian focuses on private investments, there is no stock performance to point to and not much in the way of fundamentals to rely on.

Many of these tech companies that are seeking funding from the firm may show promise but wont pan out in the future. Brenier knows this and says thats one of the reasons why Georgian has its own scientists on staff.

Instead of making blind bets on the future, Georgian turns to its applied research and development team to identify new opportunities based on new academic research and to even conduct their own in order to determine whether a new idea is actually viable.

That gives us some unique insight into how some of these things are taking off, how practical they are from an investment perspective and determining the timing of some of them, Brenier said.

The Georgian team is futurist, but theres still a limit on how far in advance they want to support a new wave of tech. We dont want to work on things that take 20 years to make a breakthrough, Brenier said.

Where breakthroughs may be even more rare for futurist investors, but the potential returns all the sweeter is in health care. The possibilities here, especially when tech plays a part of the equation, appear to be boundless.

Albrecht sees the potential in robots being able to perform surgery on humans. The portfolio manager highlighted Intuitive Surgical Inc. and its da Vinci Surgical System as an example of how this is already occurring. Through a console that offers them a 3D view of the surface area theyll be operating on, surgeons can use controllers to perform procedure with four robotic arms that offer a greater range of motion than human limbs.

Intuitive doesnt just sell the machines, it sells the accessories such as scalpels that are replaceable and need to be repeatedly ordered. So the more da Vinci units it sells, the more it opens itself up for further gains to its bottom line through accessory sales.

The next step, Albrecht said, is for this technology to allow surgeons to perform surgeries around the world remotely. After thats accomplished, humans may be removed from the equation altogether with AI.

You take the smartest doctors in the world and they might just have the slightest tremor in their hand and might not get it perfect, but a machine will come as close to that as possible, he said.

Health care now makes up about a quarter of the CIBC Global Technology Fund, which is co-managed by Michal Marszal, who has a particular interest in gene therapy.

The technology may still be in development, but Marszal said scientists will soon be able to treat certain conditions, specifically those that plague humans as a result of mutated genes, by biologically engineering new sequences to replace them.

Take haemophilia, a condition that reduces the ability of a persons blood to clot. Treating haemophilia A, which is caused due to a deficiency of a protein called factor VII, may soon be possible by removing cells from the patient, biologically engineering gene sequences with the protein in them and reinserting them.

Gilead Sciences Inc., a company that is in Marszals mutual fund, is working on gene therapy that might even be able to fight cancer. According to Marszal, the process involves removing immune cells from a human body and genetically modifying them so that they become supercharged and are better positioned to fight cancer.

The returns on investment in successful therapies are extremely high, Marszal said. Thats really the next decade or 25 years in medicine.

Thinking that far ahead may be difficult for the average investor, who is often concerned with year-end returns. But it might be worth stopping as some futurists do, even during a quiet moment like a morning coffee, to consider just how different the world will look in a decade and perhaps selfishly, how theres profit to be made from it.

Email: vferreira@nationalpost.com | Twitter:

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From space tourism to robo-surgeries: Investors are betting on the future like there's no tomorrow - Financial Post