The Daily Qubit

🗻 Japan is busy harnessing the hybrid power of quantum meets classical, plus a new framework to change up traditional error-correction

Author

Cierra Choucair
April 30, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 13 minutes

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Enjoy today’s breakdown of news, research, events & jobs within quantum.

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IN TODAY’S ISSUE:

  • Japan's strategic focus on the synergistic power of quantum and classical computing technologies is clear today.The IBM Quantum System Two will be incorporated with RIKEN's Fugaku supercomputer, while QuEra Computing Inc.'s neutral-atom quantum computer will be deployed alongside Tokyo's ABCI-Q supercomputer.

  • A team led by the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering released have proposed a new architecture that combines the power of qLDPC codes and reconfigurable atom arrays to reduce the overhead of more widely-used error correction methods.

  • Purdue University is hosting its annual Quantum Summer School, 4 straight days of informative quantum lectures led by prominent educators and voices in industry. Tune in live here and bookmark the schedule here.

  • Plus, new not-to-be-missed releases from Infleqtion’s Oqtant, PennyLane’s newest dataset, and the field voted "most likely” for the first to reach quantum advantage.

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BRIEF BYTES

NEWS FOR THOSE IN A HURRY

  • Quantum technologies span two distinct waves: Quantum 1.0, which takes advantage of basic quantum effects for devices like lasers and MRI scanners, and Quantum 2.0, which uses complex states such as entanglement for next-generation computing and sensing. Rapid advancements in quantum sensing such as increased sensitivity and accuracy are leading its commercial adoption and pointing to market growth.

  • Infleqtion’s Oqtant, an object-oriented interface for experimenting with ultracold quantum matter, has released its newest walkthrough and the subject is atomtronics! Atomtronics is an emerging field that extends the principles of traditional electronics to atomic systems. Using Oqtant to create, shape, and measure Bose-Einstein condensates, you can experiment to your heart’s content here.

  • This article explores the potential for quantum computers to outperform classical computers in condensed matter physics as the field most likely to first demonstrate quantum advantage. The study presents a systematic approach to estimating computational runtime and resource requirements for simulating quantum states. Based on qubit count and total runtime, condensed matter problems might reach this crossover more feasibly than other fields.

  • Pennylane has added the MQT Bench dataset which provides a comprehensive set of quantum circuits for benchmarking various quantum software tools. It includes 1,938 benchmark circuits ranging from 2 to 130 qubits, designed to test a wide variety of quantum algorithms such as Amplitude Estimation, Grover's Algorithm, Quantum Fourier Transformation, and Quantum Phase Estimation among others. This dataset is useful for evaluating and comparing new quantum software tools against current technology.

TOP HEADLINES IN NEWS & RESEARCH

NEWS

IBM QUANTUM AND JAPAN’S RIKEN TO ADVANCE QUANTUM SUPERCOMPUTING IN NEW PARTNERSHIP

The Brief Byte:  The IBM Quantum System Two is joining RIKEN’s Fugaku supercomputer. The collaboration will accelerate RIKEN’s development in quantum-centric supercomputing.

Breakdown:

  • This strategic alliance provides the RIKEN Center for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan with on-site access to IBM's Quantum System Two. This system will be the sole quantum computer integrated with Japan’s leading supercomputer, Fugaku. Alongside the hardware deployment, IBM will also be tailoring the software stack to support the integrated quantum-classical workflows in order to improve algorithm quality and reduce execution times.

Fugaku has 432 racks. Each rack has 8 shelves, and each shelf has three “Bunch of Blades”, and each “Bunch of Blades” has 8 CPU Memory Units, and each CPU Memory Unit has two CPUs, and each CPU represents a node. Fugaku has 158,976 nodes in total.

  • The deployment is part of a broader initiative funded by Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The project’s goal is to develop integrated technologies for quantum and supercomputers as part of the "Project for Research and Development of Enhanced Infrastructures for Post 5G Information and Communications Systems."

  • The IBM Quantum System Two includes the high-performance 133-qubit 'IBM Quantum Heron' processor which has been designed for significant error reduction and superior quantum computing capabilities. The collaboration will demonstrate the potential of hybrid computation, which many experts believe is the most practical path for quantum computing at this time.

NEWS

QuERA AND JAPAN’S AIST TO ADVANCE QUANTUM SUPERCOMPUTING IN NEW PARTNERSHIP

The Brief Byte: QuEra Computing has secured a $41M contract from Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology to install a quantum computer alongside the ABCI-Q supercomputer in 2025. This is yet another demonstration of Japan’s commitment to demonstrating the power of quantum and classical hybrid computing capabilities.

Breakdown:

  • QuEra’s neutral-atom gate-based quantum computer will be installed on-premises alongside the NVIDIA-powered ABCI-Q supercomputer at AIST. This collaboration will create a powerful hybrid quantum-classical platform for high-fidelity simulations and quantum AI applications.

A rendering of the Global Research and Development Center for Business Quantum-AI Technology’s building (what a name) that will house the ABCI-Q supercomputer, expected to be completed in early 2025.

The ABCI-Q supercomputer will be integrated with NVIDIA’s CUDA-Q open-source hybrid quantum computing platform and will be powered by 2000+ NVDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs.

  • QuEra's quantum computers, known for their scale and fidelity, feature qubit shuttling, room-temperature operation, and ready integration with classical computing infrastructures.

  • The integration is expected to advance computational research, especially in the areas of quantum circuit simulation, quantum machine learning, and new quantum-inspired algorithms.

RESEARCH

A NEW BLUEPRINT FOR SCALABLE ERROR-MITIGATION

The Brief Byte: A team of research scientists led by the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago have developed a theoretical quantum computer framework leveraging quantum low-density parity-check codes on a reconfigurable atom array. The proposed blueprint would reduce the problematic error-correction overhead from traditional logical qubits and improve scalability.

Breakdown:

  • Traditional error-correction techniques require duplicating information across a large number of qubits and comparing qubits to their neighboring qubits. qLDPC codes reduce the need for a large number of qubits by allowing for long-range comparison. But, the long-range comparison is difficult to implement.

Check out the below qLDPC breakdown from the Simons Institute for more information about these codes.

  • The team has proposed a new hardware setup involving reconfigurable atom arrays which can be manipulated with lasers to overcome the barrier to implementing qLDPC codes by facilitating communication between qubits over greater distances.

  • This advancement has the potential to lower redundancy and allow for bigger, more reliable quantum computing systems. The team will further solidify the blueprint by turning their focus to ensuring that combined codes and hardware can be used for computation.

Source: Xu, Q., Bonilla Ataides, J.P., Pattison, C.A. et al. Constant-overhead fault-tolerant quantum computation with reconfigurable atom arrays. Nat. Phys. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41534-024-00828-7

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