Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI) has announced a dedicated subscription service for access to it Dirac-1 Entropy Quantum Computing system, as QCI becomes the latest company looking to offer prospective quantum computing users an alternative to buying chunks of time on one of the major cloud service for use of a quantum computer.
The company claims the Dirac-1 Dedicated Subscription service provides enterprises with “limitless” access to a Dirac-1 Entropy Quantum Computing (EQC) system for their own exclusive use. The accessing of quantum computing resources through major cloud providers has become a widely available model, some companies are still pursuing their own subscription services (Rigetti Computing is another firm that has touted its own subscription-based offering.)
The service launch comes just days after QCI said Dutch bank Rabobank was using Dirac-1 on a fraud detection project. The company acknowledged then that it was offering EQC access via subscription, but did not formally launched the Dedicated Subscription service until this week. Dirac-1 was officially launched earlier this month at the Quantum World Congress in Washington, D.C.
Robert Liscouski, CEO of QCI, said in a statement that the EQC system unveiling there “was received with significant interest by both commercial and government attendees. We had a number of conference attendees ask us when they could actually buy the EQC, which was extremely encouraging.”
He added, “The most common complaint among users about quantum computing is availability, as businesses must either reserve a specific time block at great expense or queue with others for limited time availability. Neither of these options allows an enterprise to solve problems at the speed of business. Our Dirac-1 Dedicated Subscription allows a customer to have exclusive access to their dedicated machine at any time.”
An EQC system, also is sometimes described as an open quantum system, “carefully coupling a quantum system to an engineered environment, so that its quantum state is collapsed to represent a problem’s desirable solution,” according to QCI. The company’s efforts in this area are a direct result of its acquisition of QPhoton, announced earlier this year.
The Dirac-1 10K Qubit EQC binary system takes a different computational approach to existing quantum computing providers, QCI said, and can solve business problems with 10,000 variables. Subscribers are connected via the internet to a photonics-based, room temperature quantum computer in QCI’s quantum solutions center (the ability to operate at room temperature being another EQC strength.)
“QCI is currently working with customers who are solving time-sensitive problems ranging from drone flight path optimization to fraud detection in the banking sector,” stated Mike Keymer, QCI’s VP of Quantum Solutions. “We expect that subscription-based access to our Dirac-1 systems will grow substantially as end users increasingly look to solve critical business problems using quantum technologies. We are looking for a significant increase in sales of our EQC subscriptions in 2023.”
The company claimed its Dirac-1 subscription pricing is “competitive with levels offered by others in the marketplace, but with significantly more availability and computational capability.” It was not immediately clear which other services and systems QCI was comparing Direc-1 to.
Dan O’Shea has covered telecommunications and related topics including semiconductors, sensors, retail systems, digital payments and quantum computing/technology for over 25 years.