Quantum News Briefs December 9 begins with interview discussing “Business computing strategies for 2023: from quantum computing to Zero Trust”; followed by news about Infleqtion Unveiling SupercheQ, a Quantum Advantage for Distributed Databases; third is the announcement “D-Wave and uptownBasel Infinity Announce Collaboration on Quantum Annealing Tech” + MORE
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Business computing strategies for 2023: from quantum computing to Zero Trust
Staab notes that while the quantum computing revolution is a little way into the future, these advances in computing leave plenty for businesses to mull over. He notes: “While Quantum Day or “Q-Day”, might be still 5-10 years out, it is coming faster than we would like.”
As an immediate security measure Staab predicts: “Organizations will continue to adopt Zero Trust Security step-by-step – Zero Trust (ZT) Security is a security model, not a product. Adopting Zero Trust Security across an enterprise requires careful planning and the use of complementary, multi-vendor solutions.
Staab commented, “Furthermore, as we head towards the Quantum Computing Era, adopting a Zero Trust architecture will become more important than ever. Zero Trust principles such as “never trust, always verify” and “assume breach,” coupled the Post Quantum Computing (PQC)-inspired concepts such as Crypto Agility (i.e. the ability to seamlessly switch between classical and PQC algorithms and quickly replace compromised crypto algorithms if needed) will apply to any organization and be key for providing future-proof, next-generation cyber security.”
There is some help on the horizon: “The U.S. Department of Commerce’s (DoC) National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced it was getting ready to standardize the first set of four Post-Quantum Crypto algorithms.
In terms of the immediate future for firms, Staab advises: “Heading into 2023, developing and deploying quantum-resistant security strategies will become a growing priority for organizations in order to better defend their systems, networks, and data from future quantum attacks.”
Staab makes further predictions for the year ahead: “Moving into 2023, look for additional ZT implementation guidance and recommendations from NIST and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).” Click here to read interview in-entirety.
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Infleqtion Unveils SupercheQ, a Quantum Advantage for Distributed Databases
The emergence of commercial quantum hardware has been accompanied by new approaches to benchmarking quantum computers. In addition to application-centric benchmarking approaches such as Infleqtion’s SupermarQ suite, scientists have developed benchmarks based on sampling from random quantum circuits.
These benchmarks, including Quantum Volume, have enabled effective cross-platform comparisons, but until now have been disconnected from specific applications of quantum computers. The launch of SupercheQ changes this by endowing these random circuit sampling experiments with their first application.
“SupercheQ achieves an exponential advantage for one of the most fundamental tasks in distributed computing: checking if two files are identical,” said Pranav Gokhale, Vice President of Quantum Software at Infleqtion. “We leveraged recent advances in quantum information theory to show that the same families of circuits behind quantum volume can be used to realize this advantage.”
SupercheQ has been experimentally validated by execution on superconducting quantum hardware from IBM Quantum, which also pioneered the invention of the Quantum Volume benchmarking metric.
Click here to read complete announcement.
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D-Wave and uptownBasel Infinity Announce Collaboration on Quantum Annealing Tech
D-Wave Quantum Inc. and uptownBasel, a Swiss-based competence center for Industry 4.0, have announced an agreement that brings D-Wave’s quantum annealing technology solutions to the new uptownBasel Infinity Center of Competence for Quantum & AI. Quantum News Briefs summarizes.
Designed to accelerate quantum computing understanding and adoption, the center provides organizations with quantum skills enablement and access to a variety of quantum computing systems and renowned industry expertise to help them harness the power of the technology to solve computationally complex business and societal problems.
D-Wave will serve as the quantum optimization technology provider for uptownBasel Infinity, giving the center’s tenants and customers access to its Advantage annealing quantum computer via the Leap real-time quantum cloud service. Advantage, D-Wave’s fifth generation commercially available quantum computer with more than 5,000 qubits and 15-way qubit connectivity, excels at optimization problems ubiquitous in real-world commercial applications, such as manufacturing processes and reducing waste. In addition, the center’s customers can engage with D-Wave’s team of professional services experts to facilitate the analysis, formulation and ultimately creation of production-ready quantum computing applications.
“We’ve built the uptownBasel Infinity Center of Competence for Quantum & AI in order to serve as an innovative, collaborative and advanced hub that will facilitate technology-based solutions for industry,” said Damir Bogdan, CEO of uptownBasel Infinity. “Through our agreement with D-Wave, we’re delivering access to proven annealing quantum computing systems, products and services to give our customers the opportunity to tackle real-world optimization problems and create quantum-hybrid applications that will drive impact, today.” Click here to read the announcement in-entirety.
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Quantum-South explores quantum algorithms for air cargo optimization
In May 2022 Quantum-South started a proof of concept exploring the possibility of optimizing ULD flight loading using quantum computing, particularly in the flight handover phase of an optimization workflow. In a test case with IAG Cargo, Quantum-South algorithms were revealed to the business rules applied when planning the ULDs loading, real flights, shipments and ULD data samples in specific formats to streamline loading plans.
The Quantum-South solution is powered by quantum annealing technology like D-Wave combined with conventional systems in a cloud provider like AWS and Amazon Braket. Available packages for transportation are split in several ULDs and then organized to fit in each ULD. This solution combines two user cases: ULD load optimization in an aircraft and the bin packing optimization for a single ULD.
The results of their first trial suggests that further applications of the solution could bring flight load plans optimization improvements, allowing for benefits in the priority mix, weight and volume loaded on busy flights. It is also expected to bring process efficiency improvements, allowing to reduce the time required to analyze and optimize manually each flight. The solution could also bring significant workload efficiency, as the current optimization process focuses on a subset of all flights, and potentially could allow optimizing the whole cargo carrier network. Click here to read article in-entirety.
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Sandra K. Helsel, Ph.D. has been researching and reporting on frontier technologies since 1990. She has her Ph.D. from the University of Arizona.