Quantum News

13 Sep 2023: There is already more than enough reason to upgrade our communications systems to resist attacks from quantum computers as soon as possible. Even if completely unexpected attacks from a black-swan quantum computer are unlikely, attacks from known or suspected quantum computers would already be plenty bad enough.

11 Sep 2023: Researchers have pioneered a groundbreaking technique utilizing laser light to control individual qubits made of barium more robustly than any other method currently known. Reliably controlling qubits is a critical step towards actualizing functional quantum computers of the future.

10 Sep 2023: Chinese scientists have made a significant breakthrough in the development of practical processors for quantum computers. Previous studies were only able to entangle two atoms at a time, but the team was able to entangle eight and 10 ultracold atoms in two-dimensional blocks and one-dimensional chains respectively.

04 Sep 2023: Researchers at QuTech, a collaboration between the Delft University of Technology and TNO, have developed a new method for addressing quantum dots that could enable the operation of larger gate-defined quantum dot systems. The method uses a chessboard-like approach, where quantum dots are addressed using a combination of horizontal and vertical lines, similar to how chess pieces are addressed with letters and numbers. This approach reduces the number of control lines needed to address multiple qubits, potentially enabling the scaling up of quantum systems.

29 Aug 2023: IBM researchers have developed a system that improves error-detection in quantum computing, a major obstacle to its advancement. Quantum computers are highly sensitive to noise and prone to errors in their qubits. Unlike standard computer bits, qubits cannot be cloned without introducing errors. The researchers have developed an improved code and redesigned qubit placement that reduces the number of physical qubits needed for error-correction by one-tenth. While the approach currently only works on quantum memory and not computational power, it is seen as a step towards fault-tolerant quantum computing.

29 Aug 2023: Quantum Machines has launched its new advanced quantum control solution, OPX1000, which offers industry-leading performance metrics including feedback capabilities, runtime, analog performance, and channel density. The modular quantum controller is designed to scale control of quantum computers to 1000 qubits and beyond. The solution is currently being deployed with select customers and will be generally available later this year. OPX1000 is programmed using Quantum Machines’ intuitive pulse-level language, QUA, or at the gate level using the OpenQASM3 to QUA compiler extension.

21 Aug 2023: The National Security Agency (NSA), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) warned that cyber actors could target our nation’s most sensitive information now and leverage future quantum computing technology to break traditional non-quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms. This could be particularly devastating to sensitive information with long-term secrecy requirements. “The transition to a secured quantum computing era is a long-term intensive community effort that will require extensive collaboration between government and industry.

16 Aug 2023: The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System sees a host of emerging technological threats to the financial system — quantum computing’s ability to crack current cybersecurity schemes is one of them.

14 Aug 2023: The Uttar Pradesh Government in India has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Innogress and GAN Tech UK to establish the Indraprastha Quantum Data Center (IQDC), a new data center dedicated to quantum computing. The IQDC aims to house a million-qubit-powered quantum computer, although no exact deadline for the project has been given. Innogress and GAN Tech UK are seeking quantum computing technology partners and investors for the project, which is estimated to cost between $300 million and $500 million.

12 Aug 2023: Google is deploying a hybrid key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) in its Chrome browser to protect the sharing of encryption secrets during the establishment of secure network connections. The new system, called X25519Kyber768, combines the X25519 elliptic curve algorithm and Kyber-768, a quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithm. The move is in anticipation of future quantum computers that could potentially break existing encryption schemes. Google’s early deployment of the technology is also practical for network administrators as it adds extra data to TLS ClientHello messages to strengthen security.