The emerging technology of quantum computing could revolutionize the fight against climate change, transforming the economics of decarbonization and becoming a major factor in limiting global warming to the target temperature of 1.5°C (see sidebar “What is quantum computing?”).

DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has announced that it has selected the companies that will receive funding under its Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing (US2QC) program.

In 2009, Jeremy O'Brien, a professor at the University of Bristol, published a research paper describing how to repurpose on-chip optical components originally developed by the telecom industry to manipulate single particles of light and perform quantum operations. By 2016, based on the earlier photonic research, O’Brien and three of his academic colleagues, Terry Rudolph, Mark Thompson, and Pete Shadbolt, created PsiQuantum.

The funding will be provided by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) through the Air Force Research (AFRL) Laboratory located in Rome, New York. This lab has been designated as the Quantum Information Science Research Center for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force.

Has the United States fallen behind in the development of quantum computing to it's competitors? Is it even possible to build a general purpose one-million qubit quantum computer? Where and how could this technology be used? Join us in this week's episode of Emerging Tech Horizons with Dr. Arun Seraphin and Dr. Pete Shadbolt, Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer at PsiQuantum, as they discuss the potential applications of quantum computing.

In this episode, Pete Shadbolt, the Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of PsiQuantum, discusses how quantum computing works, its real world applications, and Pete's story of moving to America to start PsiQuantum

Photonic qubits have the great advantage that they don’t easily interact with their environment and hence are intrinsically less noisy than many other qubit types…

There’s an unsung impasse currently facing commercially useful fault-tolerant quantum computers. Useful quantum computers rely on quantum error-correcting codes that redundantly encode otherwise delicate logical information into a much larger system of physical qubits….

PsiQuantum has teamed up with STFC’s Daresbury Laboratory to develop the next generation of high-power cryogenic modules which will be necessary to scale photonic quantum computers to millions of qubits. PsiQuantum will work with Daresbury Laboratory experts specialized in large-scale cryogenic infrastructure to develop advanced cryogenic systems.

We recently announced a new approach to vastly increasing the efficiency of running quantum algorithms. We call it the Active Volume Architecture. The key insight is that if you have access to certain hardware capabilities then you can obtain remarkable reductions in the running costs of commercially useful quantum algorithms (for example, reducing running costs by around 50x for factoring algorithms).

We recently announced a new approach to vastly increasing the efficiency of running quantum algorithms. We call it the Active Volume Architecture. The key insight is that if you have access to certain hardware capabilities then you can obtain remarkable reductions in the running costs of commercially useful quantum algorithms (for example, reducing running costs by around 50x for factoring algorithms).

This technique specifically targets algorithms for error-corrected quantum computers, as opposed to non-error-corrected NISQ systems. ‘Active volume compilation’ reduces the time taken to run a given application, through more efficient use of the available hardware.

Forbes

In this most recent HPCwire/QCwire survey, senior researchers from D-Wave Systems, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and PsiQuantum tackle benchmarking, networking, and hybrid classical-quantum computing approaches.

HPCwire

In this episode, we’ll be investigating what quantum computers might be capable of by looking at one promising area of its potential application: drug discovery and development. We explore with quantum computing expert Shohini Ghose and quantum entrepreneurs Pete Shadbolt (PsiQuantum) and Robert Marino (Qubit Pharmaceuticals).

The Economist Intelligence Unit

The Quantum Insider