Quantum News Briefs July 21: Google’s New ‘Quantum Virtual Machine’, Classiq’s Software Tool to Help Design Quantum Computers, Qiskit Quantum Explorers Live August 1 & MORE

Quantum News Briefs today opens with Google’s new “Quantum Virtual Machine” to accelerate research and help people learn quantum computing and closing with an announcement about Qiskit Explorers’ new program launching August 1 also aimed at helping people learn quantum computing. News from IonQ’s new European and Israeli entities and about Classiq’s new software tool to help people create quantum circuits and quantum software round out the July 21.

Google’s New ‘Quantum Virtual Machine’ to Accelerate Research and Help People Learn Quantum Computing

Catherine Vollgraff Heidweiller, Google’s Quantum AI Product Manager announced  the addition of the Quantum Virtual Machine on July 19. The Quantum Virtual Machine (QVM) emulates the experience and results of programming one of the quantum computers in the lab, from circuit validation to processor infidelity. Google will feed measurements from Sycamore processors, such as qubit decay, dephasing, gate and readout errors into the QVM and combine these with the qubit connectivity of the device to simulate quantum processor-like output, using our physics research team’s models.
The Quantum Virtual Machine can be deployed instantly from a Colab notebook and is available free of cost. You do not have to wait in a queue to get your program’s results and can iterate on results quickly. This, combined with processor-like output makes the QVM a great tool for prototyping, testing and optimizing your quantum circuit for near term quantum hardware. Users can currently emulate two of our processors: Weber and Rainbow. Weber is the Sycamore processor that was used in beyond-classical experiments published in Nature in 2019. Rainbow was used in experiments demonstrating the variational quantum eigensolver on quantum chemistry problems published in Science.

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IonQ Announces Expansion with First European and Israeli Entities

IonQ has announced the creation of its first European and Israeli entities in support of growing regional investments in quantum computing. The German and Israeli-based entities, IonQ GmBH and IonQ Israel LTD, will provide IonQ’s industry-leading quantum systems to various European companies, states, and governments.
“With our new German and Israeli presence, we believe IonQ is well positioned to support global commercial partners as they take advantage of our world-class, trapped-ion systems for a multitude of industries,” said Peter Chapman, President and CEO, IonQ. “By incorporating in Germany and Israel, we are taking steps to truly embed ourselves within the European and Israeli tech ecosystem, democratizing access to quantum and creating new pathways to pursue curiosity. We are being clear – IonQ has a long-term commitment to the regions.”
To lead the new German and Israeli entities, IonQ has hired Noam Zakay as its new Managing Director, IonQ GmBH. Noam joins IonQ after working as a Business Development Executive at IBM for nearly three decades, where he most recently served as the Program Director of IBM Quantum Europe. Noam is based out of Haifa, Israel and will oversee business development and sales throughout the region.
Click to read complete announcement here.

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A Software Tool Helps to Design Quantum Computers

Classiq, an Israeli-based start-up with headquarters in Tel Aviv, has developed a software platform that helps people create quantum circuits and quantum software.  Maurizio Di Paolo Emilio recently wrote an article for EEWeb that explains the Classiq platform. Emilio’s article summarized here.
The main idea behind Classiq’s platform is that quantum algorithms should not be limited by the time and effort required to develop complex gate-levels. That’s why they created a software platform to aid quantum teams in automating the conversion of high-level functional models into efficient quantum circuits. As shown in Figure 1, quantum circuit synthesis by Classiq automatically converts a high-level model of the algorithm into an optimized quantum circuit. By using Classiq’s Quantum Algorithm Design platform, quantum teams are able to design quantum algorithms that would otherwise be impossible to create.
Classiq has essentially built a system where those who want to develop quantum software can enter a high-level functional model, together with the applicable constraints, such as the number of qubits, circuit depth, gate set, entanglement level, connectivity, and more.
Classiq is also compatible with any universal gate-based quantum computers and is already integrated with the major quantum cloud providers (IBM, Azure Quantum, AWS Braket, and others).

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Sign Up for Qiskit Quantum Explorers: Program Live August 2022-February 2023

Quantum Explorers is a self-paced, gamified quantum computing learning program for high school students and above. The theme of the learning journey is space exploration. Participants will gain a general understanding of quantum computing, some of its applications such as quantum machine learning and quantum optimization, and program real quantum computers.
The program will be live from August 2022 to February 2023. Total materials cover approximately 34 to 70 hours spanning over these 6 months. Level of engagement depends on the participant.
Registration will be live August 1 on this link.
There are six themed achievements to unlock, with corresponding Badges to collect. Each Badge has a learning module, event, or set of tasks associated with it that must be completed in order to unlock its achievement. (Note: these Badges are not IBM Quantum certifications but are fun indicators of a participant’s progress.)

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.