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IBM’s announcement of a 1,000+ qubit computer is expected in the next few weeks but the startup might be a few leaps ahead.

Boulder, Colorado-based Atom Computing has beaten tech giant IBM in developing a quantum computer with more than 1,000 qubits. This next-generation quantum computing platform will be available for interested users next year, a company press release said.

Developments in quantum computing have become a race of sorts as businesses from different parts of the world are looking to take the lead in this next frontier of technology. Giants such as Microsoft, Google, and IBM have been working on developing their versions of the complex computer in a domain that is equally accessible to startups.

Nanotechnology sounds like a futuristic development, but we already have it in the form of CPU manufacturing. More advanced nanotech could be used to create independent mobile entities like nanobots. One of the main challenges is selecting the right chemicals, elements, and structures that actually perform a desired task. Currently, we create more chemically oriented than computationally oriented nanobots, but we still have to deal with the quantum effects at tiny scale.

One of the most important applications of nanotechnology is to create nanomedicine, where the technology interacts with biology to help resolve problems. Of course, the nanobots have to be compatible with the body (e.g. no poisonous elements if they were broken down, etc).

Continue reading “How nanobots and nanomedicine will improve our health” »

Researchers at the UAB and ICMAB have succeeded in bringing wireless technology to the fundamental level of magnetic devices. The emergence and control of magnetic properties in cobalt nitride layers (initially non-magnetic) by voltage, without connecting the sample to electrical wiring, represents a paradigm shift that can facilitate the creation of magnetic nanorobots for biomedicine and computing systems where basic information management processes do not require wiring.

The study was recently published in the latest issue of Nature Communications.

Electronic devices rely on manipulating the electrical and magnetic properties of components, whether for computing or storing information, among other processes. Controlling magnetism using voltage instead of electric currents has become a very important control method to improve energy efficiency in many devices, since currents heat up circuits. In recent years, much research has been carried out to implement protocols for applying voltages to carry out this control, but always through electrical connections directly on the materials.

California-based startup Atom Computing has announced a 1,225-qubit quantum computer, the first to break the 1,000+ barrier, which it plans to release in 2024.

Quantum bits, or qubits, are the basic units of information in quantum computing – equivalent to bits in classical computing. Unlike bits, however, qubits can exist in multiple states simultaneously, allowing them to perform calculations that would take millions of years for an ordinary computer.

Researchers at the University of Stuttgart have demonstrated that a key ingredient for many quantum computation and communication schemes can be performed with an efficiency that exceeds the commonly assumed upper theoretical limit — thereby opening up new perspectives for a wide range of photonic quantum technologies.

Quantum science not only has revolutionized our understanding of nature, but is also inspiring groundbreaking new computing, communication, and sensor devices. Exploiting quantum effects in such ‘quantum technologies’ typically requires a combination of deep insight into the underlying quantum-physical principles, systematic methodological advances, and clever engineering. And it is precisely this combination that researchers in the group of Prof. Stefanie Barz at the University of Stuttgart and the Center for Integrated Quantum Science and Technology (IQST) have delivered in recent study, in which they have improved the efficiency of an essential building block of many quantum devices beyond a seemingly inherent limit.

Historical foundations: from philosophy to technology.

In a new study, scientists from the US and Taiwan have theoretically demonstrated the existence of a universal lower bound on topological entanglement entropy, which is always non-negative. The findings are published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Quantum systems are bizarre and follow their own rules, with quantum states telling us everything we know about that system. Topological entanglement entropy (TEE) is a measure that provides insights into emergent non-local phenomena and entanglement in quantum systems with topological properties.

Given the fundamental role of quantum entanglement in quantum computing and various information applications, understanding TEE becomes essential for gaining insights into the behavior of quantum systems.

A quantum computing platform that is capable of the simultaneous operation of multiple spin-based quantum bits (qubits) has been created by researchers in South Korea. Designed by Yujeong Bae, Soo-hyon Phark, Andreas Heinrich and colleagues at the Institute for Basic Science in Seoul, the system is assembled atom-by-atom using a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM).

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While quantum computers of the future should be able to outperform conventional computers at certain tasks, today’s nascent quantum processors are still too small and noisy to do practical calculations. Much more must be done to create viable qubit platforms that can retain information for long enough for quantum computers to be viable.

Quantum computers of the future hold promise in solving all sorts of problems. For example, they could lead to more sustainable materials and new medicines, and even crack the hardest problems in fundamental physics. But compared to the classical computers in use today, rudimentary quantum computers are more prone to errors. Wouldn’t it be nice if researchers could just take out a special quantum eraser and get rid of the mistakes?

Reporting in the journal Nature, a group of researchers led by Caltech is among the first to demonstrate a type of quantum eraser. The physicists show that they can pinpoint and correct for mistakes in quantum computing systems known as “erasure” errors.

“It’s normally very hard to detect errors in quantum computers, because just the act of looking for errors causes more to occur,” says Adam Shaw, co-lead author of the new study and a graduate student in the laboratory of Manuel Endres, a professor of physics at Caltech. “But we show that with some careful control, we can precisely locate and erase certain errors without consequence, which is where the name erasure comes from.”

The US has relied on computer simulations since 1992 for verifying the performance of its nuclear stockpile but will soon get more realistic estimates.

Three US national defense labs are engaged in the process of building a test site, one thousand feet under the ground in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that will send powerful X-rays and verify the reliability of the country’s nuclear stockpile, a press release said.

The US nuclear program heavily relied on actual testing of warheads to determine if its stockpile could serve as a deterrent when called upon. This, however, changed in 1992, after then-President George H.W. Bush signed a law calling for a moratorium on nuclear testing.