Quantum Computing 2021 Update

foreign [Music] welcome to another video from explaining computers.com this time it's my fifth annual update on developments in Quantum computing as usual this will not be a technical presentation but rather an overview of what some major Pioneers have said and done in the past 12 months and to start things off I thought we'd have a 90 second summary of what Quantum Computing is all about conventional or classical computers are built from billions of transistors that are turned on or off to represent a value of either one or zero in turn this allows classical computers to store and process data using binary digits or bits in contrast quantum computers process information using Quantum bits or qubits these can be created in many different ways for example using superconducting electronic circuits by trapping ionized atoms or by squeezing light unlike classical bits qubits can exist in more than one state or superposition at exactly the same point in time this allows a qubit to assume a value of 1 or 0 or both of these numbers simultaneously in turn this enables a quantum computer to process a far higher number of data possibilities than a classical computer pairs of qubits can also become entangled this means that the state of one qubit is tied to the state of another which can be used to speed up Quantum Computing calculations indeed by leveraging superposition and entanglement quantum computers are expected to be able to accomplish tasks such as complex Logistics optimizations and Quantum molecular modeling that are impossible to perform using conventional computers an increasing number of organizations are working at the quantum Hardware or software Frontier mergers and Acquisitions are also starting to occur which is a clear sign of a maturing industry for example in June 2021 Honeywell Quantum Solutions announced that it's to combine with Cambridge Quantum computing given that in 2020 Honeywell claimed to have the world's highest performing quantum computer this can be a significant move with CQC being a Quantum Pioneer to watch the fact that far more companies as well as a great many University departments are now working on Quantum Computing is a very positive development however it does mean that I cannot cover all of their recent Innovations in this single video and so I'm now going to focus on those developments that have really fired my imagination in the last 12 months if you want to stay close to the quantum Computing Edge it's all worth keeping an eye on IBM the company now provides Cloud access to a fleet of quantum computers as well as offering its system 1 Hardware to selected clients who want their own on-site quantum computer in September 2020 IBM also published a roadmap that indicates how it expects to scale up from its current 27 and 65 cubic Quantum processors to modeled with over 1 000 cubits by mid decade and towards a million by 2030. in February 2021 IBM additionally published a roadmap for building an open Quantum Computing ecosystem here it hopes to work with the open source Community as well as other Pioneers including the aforementioned Cambridge Quantum Computing in order to make Quantum hardware easily accessible to traditional programmers as IBM explained looking to 2025 and Beyond we think that our dream of frictionless quantum Computing will become a reality one where the hardware is no longer a concern to users or Developers by then we envision that developers will rely on our Advanced Hardware with a cloud-based API and will include Quantum computation as a natural component of their existing computation pipelines we hope that by 2030 companies and users are running billions if not a trillion Quantum circuits a day perhaps without even realizing that they're doing so in May 2021 IBM demonstrated how it's keeping to its Quantum roadmaps by releasing its new KISS kit runtime software kiskit is IBM's Quantum software development platform and the new runtime variant executing the IBM Cloud rather than on the user's machine and in close proximity to the quantum Hardware it controls this speeds up communication between the classical computers that create an interpret Quantum circuits and Quantum algorithms and the quantum computers that execute them some Quantum programs require thousands or even millions of interactions between Quantum and classical Hardware by reducing classical to Quantum system latency IBM have subsequently demonstrated how kiskit runtime can speed up Quantum workloads by 120 times specifically the process of modeling a lithium hydride molecule has been reduced from 45 days to 9 hours foreign at the time of making this video IBM's most powerful quantum computer has a 65 Cubit superconducting processor called hummingbird however in June 2021 a team from the University of Science and Technology of China revealed that they had built a 66 Cubit superconducting Quantum processor called Zoo chompsy the team also reported that sampling simulation benchmarks executed on zoo chongxi around two to three times faster than similar simulations while on Google's Sycamore Quantum processor in October 2019. This is highly significant as when Google reported on its work it claimed to have achieved Quantum Supremacy or in other words to have executed a task on a quantum computer that could not feasibly be run in a reasonable amount of time on a classical computer Google's Quantum Supremacy claim was rapidly dismissed by IBM not least because Quantum Supremacy was initially defined to refer to a situation where a quantum computer does something that cannot be done on a classical computer in this context it's worth noting that the sampling benchmarks executed on zoo chongxi completed in about 1.2 hours compared to an estimated eight years if brought on the world's most powerful classical supercomputer when reporting their achievement the team behind zuchi concluded that our work establishes an unambiguous Quantum computational advantage the team's choice of the term quantum computational Advantage was clearly also chosen with great care and without doubt the debate will continue to rage concerning whether anybody has yet achieved Quantum Supremacy however what cannot be disputed is that around the globe we now have researchers creating and operating quantum computers that can do things that are increasingly difficult to replicate using conventional Hardware the quantum processors created by IBM Google and the University of Science and Technology of China are all based on superconducting qubits that have to be super cooled to almost absolute zero this places major constraints on their future development and in the past 12 months significant progress has been made with alternative Quantum Computing Technologies and in particular those that use photonic qubits for example in September 2020 the Canadian company Xanadu launched a Quantum Computing service based on its photonic Quantum processors these operate primarily at room temperature and are manufactured from Silicon just like classical micro processors within xanadu's Quantum chips qubits are created by squeezing laser light using ring resonators this creates superpositions of different numbers of photons which enter a sequence of externally programmable Quantum Gates called an interferometer within which they entangle finally special transition Edge sensors count the photons exiting the interferometer which allows the quantum State representing the output of a Quantum algorithm to be converted to a stream of numerical data in May 2021 Xanadu raised an additional 100 million dollars of funding and in July it was also awarded a DARPA Grant to further progress its work Salado has additionally developed a python Library called Penny Lane The quantum machine learning as well as another called Strawberry Fields for simulating and executing programs on Quantum photonic Hardware other Pioneers working on photonic quantum computers include PSI quantum the latter has set itself a goal to build one million qubit photonic quantum computers and in May 2021 announced that it had developed the capability to manufacture silicon photonic chips that will form the foundation of its future q1 system in July 2021 site Quantum also completed a 450 million dollar funding round so it seems that interest is rising rapidly in the development of quantum computers that process data using light foreign over the past 12 months Quantum Computing has continued to advance and over the past five years we've seen very significant progress which suggest that by the end of the 2020s quantum Computing will be a commercial reality now this is not to suggest that quantum computers will replace traditional computers rather used in conjunction with classical Hardware Quantum processors will be used for very particular types of activity things like molecular modeling Logistics optimizations and certain forms of a i now one of the things that's really pushing Quantum Computing forward is the availability of quantum Hardware that can be accessed over the internet from the cloud back in April 2016 Quantum Computing as a service qcaas as it's called did not exist but in May 2016 IBM became the first company to make a quantum computer available over the web and currently IBM provides online access to 20 different Quantum systems in addition many other Pioneers now provide qcaas including Alibaba Google Righetti zaladu Oxford Quantum circuits d-wave systems who offer a Quantum Cloud platform called leap as well as Amazon and Microsoft both Microsoft's Azure Quantum and Amazon's bracket Quantum web service work by facilitating access to online Quantum Hardware provided by their partners collaboration is indeed currently widespread in the growing Quantum Computing community and embryonic Marketplace and it's good to see that at present knowledge expertise and Hardware are widely shared links to all of the announcements I've discussed in this video are down in the video description and I've also updated the quantum Computing page over on explaining computers.com but now that's it for another video if you've enjoyed but you've seen it please press that like button if you haven't subscribed Please Subscribe and I hope to talk to you again very soon [Music]

Channel: ExplainingComputers

Views: 148,818

Keywords: Quantum computing, quantum computing review, quantum computing 2021, IBM quantum roadmap, quantum supremacy, quantum computational advantage, Zuchongzhi, Zuchongzhi quantum computer, photonic quantum computing, Xanadu quantum computer, PsiQuantum, IBM quantum computing, most powerful quantum computer, most powerful quantum processor, quantum computing as a service, QCaaS, Christopher Barnatt, Barnatt, quantum computing roadmap

Id: wRKc_ilWcao

Length: 13min 13sec (793 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 22 2021