Inside Quantum Technology - Get The Latest Quantum News & Events Here

The Quantum Dragon heard that qBraid is offering a reward-based QUEST and took off, as usual, before waiting for all the details (that’s me on the bridge). Quantum University Education & Support Track (QUEST) is offering up to $5,000 for credits to access 25+ quantum computers, so be sure to hide before he finds out there’s no gold.

This week’s IQT News:

• A Conference to Remember 2, Part 1/2
• IQT Sunday Edition

This week’s premium content:

• China Telecom’s Jiuzhang-4.0
• Access EuroHPC JU’s Quantum Computers
• Zapata Nonquantum has a sense of humor.

This week’s Friends of The Quantum Dragon:

• “The clock is ticking and may be running out for some.” by Dr. Garfield Jones, EVP Strategy and Research at QuSecure
• “The hard part is changing encryption across real government systems without breaking the services people depend on.” by Rebecca Krauthamer, CEO and co-Founder of QuSecure
• “For our portfolio, this validates the thesis years early.” by Anis Uzzaman, Founder & CEO at Pegasus Tech Ventures
• The federal deadlines will cascade into supply chain requirements. by Vijay Viswanathan, Vice President of Product at ISARA
• “Many organisations have yet to grasp the true scale of the challenge.” by Kieran B., Head of Security Engineering at Bridewell
• “Mission assurance has to exist from day one.” by Brian Cunningham, EVP Strategy & Growth, QuSecure

This week’s Thirty Mile Dragon (TMD):

In this edition:

• Don McMillan’s atom lost an electron?
• IBM’s 7-Angstrom Transistor
• Yuval Boger’s Clifford Gates
• China thinks stealing is “learning.”
• How much of the research needed to build, deploy, operate, and widely exploit practical and useful quantum computers have we completed?
• #85: “We can solve problems 43 million times bigger than anyone else.”
• What the heck is a “pre-apprenticeship”?
• Quantum Noise Detector

Don McMillan’s atom lost an electron?

If Don McMillan actually wrote the first joke, I’ve been telling a variation of it for years. My version, though, doesn’t involve a bar. It’s just a 3-line conversation on a slide between an ytterbium ion and a strontium atom. I place it between an overview of QC modalities and trapped ions, explaining that ions lend themselves to humor.

IBM’s 7-Angstrom Transistor

I like to point out that the standard distance between atoms in a neutral atom array is 4 micrometers (that’s the starting point on QuEra’s Aquila, anyway), and that a nanoscale transistor could, in principle, fit between any 2 atoms with plenty of room to spare. Now the comparison is going to be even more extreme.

Yuval Boger’s Clifford Gates

If you still think “Quantum Bits” is for novices, wait until you get to “Clifford Gates.” The explanation for that comic strip introduces non-Clifford gates and magic state distillation, and I’m only about a quarter of the way through the book. What else is in store? Stay subscribed, buy the book, or both!

China thinks stealing is “learning.”

This isn’t specific to quantum, but it’s relevant. From the earliest web portals that were obvious knockoffs of the IBMQ Experience to the recent startups by researchers returning from the United States, China steals. I would argue that their leapfrogging lands them on their faces, though, because the quantum computers we can see suck.

How much of the research needed to build, deploy, operate, and widely exploit practical and useful quantum computers have we completed?

Jack Krupansky asked this question on LinkedIn, and I apparently voted with the masses. That’s good to know. However, the poll would be more informative if it had more respondents, so go ahead and let your opinion be known. If you don’t want it known, keep in mind that only Mr. Krupansky will know how everyone voted.

#85: “We can solve problems 43 million times bigger than anyone else.”

I spoke with Toby Cubitt, Co-Founder and CTO of Phasecraft about why we need algorithms when we don’t have hardware to run them on, a claim of 43,000,000X greater efficiency, the skillset needed to do what they do, quantum phase estimation (QPE) without controlled unitaries, the secret ingredient of their secret depth-reducing sauce, and more.

What the heck is a “pre-apprenticeship”?

The Chattanooga Quantum Collaborative has a pre-apprenticeship, and I admit to having absolutely no idea what that is. Is it the first in the nation pre-apprenticeship for quantum, or is it the first in the nation pre-apprenticeship? As the 2nd least qualified person in quantum, do I need something that comes before that?

Quantum Noise Detector

Alan Ho and Prof. Michael Biercuk inspired the Resuscitated Quantum Bullshit Detector, but the original(?) has resurfaced on Bluesky. It’s back to reposting a simple “bullshit” or “not bullshit,” so The Quantum Dragon will continue to monitor for challenges, controversies, and debates under this new name from Dr. Bob Sutor.