Advanced Computing in the Age of AI | Friday, March 29, 2024

Early Adopters Exercise Quantum Bits 

For a technology that’s usually characterized as far off and in a distant galaxy, quantum computing has been steadily picking up steam. Just how close real-world applications are depends on whom you talk to and for what kinds of applications. Los Alamos National Lab, for example, has an active application development effort for its D-Wave system and LANL researcher Susan Mniszewski and colleagues have made progress on using the D-Wave machine for aspects of quantum molecular dynamics simulations.

At CeBIT this week D-Wave and Volkswagen will discuss their pilot project to monitor and control taxi traffic in Beijing using a hybrid HPC-quantum system – this is on the heels of recent customer upgrade news from D-Wave. Last week IBM announced expanded access to its five-qubit cloud-based quantum developer platform. In early March, researchers from the Google Quantum AI Lab published an excellent commentary in Natureexamining real-world opportunities, challenges and timeframes for quantum computing more broadly. Google is also considering making its homegrown quantum capability available through the cloud.

As an overview, the Google commentary provides a great snapshot, noting soberly that challenges such as the lack of solid error correction and the small size (number of qubits) in today’s machines – whether “universal” digital machines like IBM’s or “analog” adiabatic annealing machines like D-Wave’s – have prompted many observers to declare useful quantum computing is still a decade way. Not so fast, says Google.

Read the full story on sister web site HPCwire.

About the author: George Leopold

George Leopold has written about science and technology for more than 30 years, focusing on electronics and aerospace technology. He previously served as executive editor of Electronic Engineering Times. Leopold is the author of "Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Times of Gus Grissom" (Purdue University Press, 2016).

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