Mediaboss Marketing

Quantum physics can sometimes seem almost metaphysical, but even the field that introduced spooky action at a distance is grounded in the tangible world of computers, networks and sensors.

To usher in the next era of quantum technology, researchers need specialized, made-to-spec equipment that can crunch data faster and bring the field farther.

In a show of Pitts dedication to lead the way, the Universitys Strategic Advancement Fund has approved its first loan, $11.6 million, to support the establishment of the Western Pennsylvania Quantum Information Core (WPQIC). This cross-disciplinary, multi-institution effort will position the University and its partners at the forefront of the field.

More than 10 years ago, Pitt established the Pittsburgh Quantum Institute, a collaboration among faculty from Pitt, Carnegie Mellon University and Duquesne University. Last year the institute established its first agreements with industry partners in service of commercialization.

The core will allow the entire region to level up to a more comprehensive and integrated platform for quantum experimentation across a range of fundamental physics and emerging applications, said Rob A. Rutenbar, Pitts senior vice chancellor for research.

Pitt is at the leading edge of quantum education, offering one of the first undergraduate degrees in the field. Now it will be a hub where students, researchers and industry partners come together to forge the underpinnings of a stronger quantum information science and engineering (QUISE) discipline.

The core is a natural progression for Pitt, which has been dedicated to cutting-edge quantum information science and engineering research, said Rob Cunningham, vice chancellor for research infrastructure. This is the natural next step.

To continue to lead, however, researchers need specialized equipment: correlated photon counters, machinesthat allow for work to be done in a vacuum and refrigerators that can keep temperatures just a touch above absolute zero.

There are many ways to build this quantum hardware.

What unites all these disparate techniques is that they are hard, said Michael Hatridge, a physics professor in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, a quantum-computer builder and the inaugural director of the WPQIC.

The core's job is to make them merely super tough. By bringing together these amazing, modern instruments, we should be able to make big strides in quantum research, Hatridge said.

The WPQIC will support faculty by providing this state-of-the-art instrumentation and adding staff. These expanded capabilities will allow Pitt to continue to grow its program offerings in many areas of QUISE, providing a unique opportunity for all students, researchers and faculty to use tools most researchers cant regularly access.

Quantum science is not solely an endeavor for the physicist, and so investments will be made in existing facilities in the departments of chemistry and physics in the Dietrich School, the Swanson School of Engineering and the School of Computing and Information. A new, central facility will enable even more collaborative research.

The WPQIC embodies the core of the Universitys purpose as outlined in its strategic initiative, the Plan for Pitt, by helping provide the best opportunities for students and staff while bringing to the region an industry that will only continue to grow. This vision one of new industry ecosystems and the opportunities they bring is shared by Mayor Ed Gainey.

Pittsburgh has been able to thrive in large part because of its ability to embrace cutting-edge technology, said Gainey. Thats why I support the Western Pennsylvania Quantum Information Core at the University of Pittsburgh. It will help develop a quantum-ready workforce primed to make novel discoveries and develop new industries that will benefit everyone in the region.

As more projects are supported, the University and the region will continue to see growth.

As the first initiative to receive [this strategic funding], the Western Pennsylvania Quantum Information Core reflects the Universitys commitment to Pitts leadership in quantum information science, said Senior Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer Hari Sastry. It is an excellent example of how the University can use the fund to invest in strategic initiatives that will enhance Pitts strong research reputation.

Brandie Jefferson, photography by Aimee Obidzinski

Read the original here:
Western Pa. is set to 'level up' its quantum capabilities with an $11.6 ... - University of Pittsburgh

The American semiconductor giant, NVIDIA, unveiled on Monday morning a supercomputer named Israel-1, estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

According to the company, it is the most powerful supercomputer in Israel and one of the most powerful on earth. It includes 2,048 H100 graphic processors and 2,560 BlueField-3 DPU chips, all developed locally.

The stated purpose of the new supercomputer is to facilitate collaborations with industry, support internal R&D, and serve as a showcase for building high-performance computers based on NVIDIA's new Spectrum-X platform.

A supercomputer is an exceptionally powerful entity, composed of thousands of processors, used for performing highly complex tasks, including the development of generative artificial intelligence applications and quantum computing, as well as running scientific simulations.

The main advantage to having a supercomputer in Israel is primarily that local users no longer need to pre-order processing time on scattered supercomputers worldwide.

Currently, supercomputer facilities rent out their usage time to external clients. Of course, availability corresponds to payment, making the use of this technology expensive and cumbersome.

An Israeli supercomputer can greatly streamline processes for local entities and accelerate their research and development endeavors.

The establishment of the supercomputer in Israel marks a significant milestone, introducing an internationally recognized infrastructure that surpasses the standard capabilities found in the local industry.

Israel-1, unveiled at the recent Computex conference in Taiwan, is poised to deliver exceptional AI performance, reaching up to 8 exaflops (equivalent to 10 raised to the power of 18, a quintillion). This achievement positions it among the world's fastest supercomputers for executing artificial intelligence computations.

The timing of this announcement is significant. In recent years, Israel has successfully attracted prominent tech giants like Google, Amazon, Oracle and Microsoft, all of whom have established their own local cloud computing systems.

To facilitate the establishment of these data centers, local telecommunications companies have partnered with these tech giants to create high-speed fiber-optic communication infrastructures, connecting Israel to both Asia and Western Europe with remarkably low latency.

Although NVIDIA's primary focus for Israel-1 is on demonstrations and internal usage, when asked by Ynet, the company did not rule out the possibility of also catering to customers in neighboring countries within the region.

Nvidia's initiative is distinct in that it does not involve any state investment, despite the previous announcement by the Bennett-Lapid government last year regarding the allocation of funds for an Israeli supercomputer project, estimated at approximately $78 million.

However, given the typical uncertainties that arise following a change in Israel's government, it remains unclear to what extent this budget will be used for the development and construction of the supercomputer.

In fact, Nvidia's announcement could potentially further postpone the establishment of the supercomputer, as the government may prefer to encourage private sector investments in the field rather than relying solely on the current state budget, which may not be sufficient.

By year's end, the company plans to have Israel-1 up and running at its own facility. While Nvidia has not disclosed comprehensive details concerning the expenses and specific functions of the supercomputer, as the launch date draws near, more information likely will be made available.

Read the original post:
Accelerating innovation: Israel welcomes cutting-edge supercomputer - Ynetnews

WASHINGTON When I talked to Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, near midnight Wednesday my time Thursday afternoon in Japan he was at the Marine Corps Air Station in Iwakuni, waiting for President Joe Biden to land in Air Force One.

Biden is in Japan for the G7 Hiroshima Summit a meeting of the nations with the biggest economies.

The Group of Seven nicknamed the G7 consists of the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom.

The summit is dealing with, among other things, the Ukraine war, with the G7 members installing more sanctions to try to financially starve the Russian war machine; economic security and the threat from China; and nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament.

Hiroshima was destroyed when, at 2:45 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped the worlds first atomic bomb.

The occasion of our brief interview before Emanuel greeted Biden on the tarmac was to discuss a deal Emanuel put together where he got IBM and Google to, combined, put up $150 million for the University of Chicago and the University of Tokyo to study ways to make more powerful quantum computing.

What this means for the city of Chicago is this, Emanuel said: This puts Chicago in the lead in the field of quantum. The University of Chicago is now one of the premier schools worldwide in quantum research, which will pay dividends for generations economically.

The emerging field of quantum computing, according to the Department of Energy, may revolutionize our ability to solve problems that are hard to address with even the largest supercomputers.

The agreements between the schools will be formalized at the G7 on Sunday, with, among others, the U. of C. president, Paul Alivisatos, in attendance.

Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor, won Senate confirmation for this post on Dec.18, 2021, shortly after moving to Tokyo to start a new chapter in a career where, before landing in City Hall and serving two terms as mayor, he was a House member and former President Barack Obamas first chief of staff.

The origins of this new partnership stem from a lunch Emanuel had with the University of Tokyo president, where Emanuel learned about that schools quantum computing program.

Emanuel was aware from his time as mayor that the U. of C. was already a leader in the area of quantum information and technology, so he asked the Tokyo school president, What do you think about a partnership?

After that, Emanuel said he reached out to Tom Pritzker, whose family charities have heavily supported research at the U. of C. in 2019 the Pritzker Foundation pledged $100 million for the new Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, which has made quantum technology a focus.

To get to the bottom line, Emanuel said he promised to find new funding that turned out to be IBM and Google to make the quantum computing collaboration a reality.

IBM is giving, over 10 years, $100 million to develop according to the U. of C. the worlds first quantum-centric supercomputer. Google is putting up $50 million to, again according to the U. of C., support quantum computing research and to help train the quantum workforce of the future.

In our faith, we would call it matchmaking, Emanuel told me about his role in taking this project from a concept to raising the $100 million and $50 million to make it happen.

Most of the U. ofC. work stemming from this collaboration will be centered at the William Eckhardt Research Center, at 57th and Ellis. The U. of C. is part of an evolving quantum research ecosystem, with the network including the Argonne and Fermi national labs, based in the Chicago suburbs; the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Northwestern University; and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

I asked Emanuel about the impact of discussing nuclear weapons in Hiroshima.

Obviously, the setting itself speaks to nuclear non-proliferation, but it also speaks to deterrence. I think the main thing to think about, said Emanuel, who has been to Hiroshima four times, is the city has multiple meanings, not a singular meaning.

See the article here:
Rahm Emanuel crafts $150 million quantum computing research deal with U. of Chicago, U. of Tokyo - Chicago Sun-Times

By Yuval Boger

Last year, a group of scientists published a paper in Nature that discussed qubit shuttling, or as it was called in the paper coherent transport of entangled atom arrays. The work of this Harvard-led group that included scientists from QuEra Computing, MIT, and the University of Innsbruck, could prove pivotal for the development of large-scale quantum computing using neutral atom arrays.

The video below demonstrates this shuttling. This is a real video (with added red ellipses for emphasis), not an animation.

It shows groups of physical qubits that are moved at the same time. The red circles show the potential for entanglement with nearby qubits at every step.

Coherent qubit shuttling the ability to move qubits around while preserving their quantum state could profoundly impact how next-generation quantum computers might be built. That potential impact can be appreciated in three areas: error correction, multi-zone architecture and scale-up.

A primary challenge in building large-scale quantum computers lies in error management. Unlike classical computing, where information from a single binary digit can be duplicated for error correction, quantum mechanics doesnt allow for such copying (the no-cloning theorem). Therefore, quantum error correction involves spreading information across multiple qubits through entanglement to create redundancy.

The ability to move qubits while preserving their state allows entangling nearby qubits but then spreading these entangled qubits over a larger area. One such error correction code that involves spreading qubits over an area is the toric code, where logical qubits are encoded in such a way that they span a two-dimensional lattice. Because the logical qubits are spread out over a large area, localized errors affect only a small portion of the logical qubit, which makes it possible to correct the error without damaging the overall quantum information. See this article in Nature from Harvard, University of Innsbruck, MIT and AWS, for illustrations of this toric code.

Once qubits can be moved around while preserving their state, one could envision the development of a quantum computing architecture that includes multiple zones. For instance, one could imagine an architecture with three zones:

Enabled by qubit shuttling, qubits can be moved in and out of these zones as required.

Beyond the fact that error-corrected qubits allow meaningful execution of longer circuits, there is the question of control signals. Control signals are required to alter the state of individual qubits as well as to perform multi-qubit operations. However, as one thinks about million-qubit machines, do we expect to have millions of control signals? Imagine opening up your 4K television and discovering that every pixel has a wire going to it. That would be ridiculous. Similarly, qubit shuttling allows increasing the number of qubits without a matching increase in control signals

Additionally, qubit shuttling essentially enables any-to-any qubit connectivity. This is in contrast to fixed-layout configurations where qubits are connected to just their nearest neighbors. Any-to-any connectivity allows compressing the circuit because information can propagate with fewer information.

In conclusion, the ability to shuttle qubits around while maintaining their quantum state can have far-reaching implications for the future of quantum computing and bring us one step closer to realizing its full potential. This advancement opens up innovative approaches to error correction, multi-zone architecture, and scaling. It allows for a much more flexible, robust, and efficient quantum computing architecture that can handle complex computations and larger circuits while managing errors more effectively.

Yuval Boger is the Chief Marketing Officer for QuEra, the leader in quantum computers based on neutral atoms. QuEras 256-qubit computer is available for public access on Amazon Braket.

May 17, 2023

Go here to see the original:
Qubit Shuttling and its Implication for Neutral Atom Computers - Quantum Computing Report

This article has been reviewed according to ScienceX's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

fact-checked

peer-reviewed publication

trusted source

proofread

Insilico Medicine, a clinical stage generative artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, today announced that it combined two rapidly developing technologies, quantum computing and generative AI, to explore lead candidate discovery in drug development and successfully demonstrated the potential advantages of quantum generative adversarial networks in generative chemistry.

The study, published in the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling, was led by Insilico's Taiwan and UAE centers which focus on pioneering and constructing breakthrough methods and engines with rapidly developing technologiesincluding generative AI and quantum computingto accelerate drug discovery and development.

The research was supported by University of Toronto Acceleration Consortium director Aln Aspuru-Guzik, Ph.D., and scientists from the Hon Hai (Foxconn) Research Institute.

"This international collaboration was a very fun project," said Aln Aspuru-Guzik, director of the Acceleration Consortium and professor of computer science and chemistry at the University of Toronto. "It sets the stage for further developments in AI as it meets drug discovery. This is a global collaboration where Foxconn, Insilico, Zapata Computing, and University of Toronto are working together."

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are one of the most successful generative models in drug discovery and design and have shown remarkable results for generating data that mimics a data distribution in different tasks. The classic GAN model consists of a generator and a discriminator. The generator takes random noises as input and tries to imitate the data distribution, and the discriminator tries to distinguish between the fake and real samples. A GAN is trained until the discriminator cannot distinguish the generated data from the real data.

In this paper, researchers explored the quantum advantage in small molecule drug discovery by substituting each part of MolGAN, an implicit GAN for small molecular graphs, with a variational quantum circuit (VQC), step by step, including as the noise generator, generator with the patch method, and quantum discriminator, comparing its performance with the classical counterpart.

The study not only demonstrated that the trained quantum GANs can generate training-set-like molecules by using the VQC as the noise generator, but that the quantum generator outperforms the classical GAN in the drug properties of generated compounds and the goal-directed benchmark.

In addition, the study showed that the quantum discriminator of GAN with only tens of learnable parameters can generate valid molecules and outperforms the classical counterpart with tens of thousands parameters in terms of generated molecule properties and KL-divergence score.

"Quantum computing is recognized as the next technology breakthrough which will make a great impact, and the pharmaceutical industry is believed to be among the first wave of industries benefiting from the advancement," said Jimmy Yen-Chu Lin, Ph.D., GM of Insilico Medicine Taiwan and corresponding author of the paper. "This paper demonstrates Insilico's first footprint in quantum computing with AI in molecular generation, underscoring our vision in the field."

Building on these findings, Insilico scientists plan to integrate the hybrid quantum GAN model into Chemistry42, the Company's proprietary small molecule generation engine, to further accelerate and improve its AI-driven drug discovery and development process.

Insilico was one of the first to use GANs in de novo molecular design, and published the first paper in this field in 2016. The Company has delivered 11 preclinical candidates by GAN-based generative AI models and its lead program has been validated in Phase I clinical trials.

"I am proud of the positive results our quantum computing team has achieved through their efforts and innovation," said Alex Zhavoronkov, Ph.D., founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine. "I believe this is the first small step in our journey. We are currently working on a breakthrough experiment with a real quantum computer for chemistry and look forward to sharing Insilico's best practices with industry and academia."

More information: Po-Yu Kao et al, Exploring the Advantages of Quantum Generative Adversarial Networks in Generative Chemistry, Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling (2023). DOI: 10.1021/acs.jcim.3c00562

The data acquisition code and source codes associated with this study are publicly available at: github.com/pykao/QuantumMolGAN-PyTorch

Journal information: Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling

Visit link:
Study combines quantum computing and generative AI for drug discovery - Phys.org