Quantum Leaps

The following excerpt is from Yardeni Research Morning Briefing?(July 20, 2023).

Jackie Doherty & Ed Yardeni

Artificial Intelligence is just one of several technological innovations that are likely to drive the economy during the Roaring 2020s. The promise of quantum computing—and what humans can accomplish with such vast amounts of computing power—makes scientists giddy. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM are leading the race to develop these computers and offer access to them in the cloud. Here are some recent developments in the area:

(1) Google boasts supremacy. The king of search claims quantum supremacy. The latest iteration of its Sycamore quantum system has 70 qubits and a quantum processor that’s 241 million times more powerful than the company’s previous offering. Google’s quantum computer “can outperform the most powerful supercomputer in the world, running calculations that would take the massive 1.68 exaflops ‘Frontier’ system at Oak Ridge National Laboratories 47 years to complete,” explained a July 18 article in The Next?Platform.

(2) Amazon plays host. Amazon Bracket is a service that lets users build their own quantum algorithms and then test them on quantum computers in Amazon’s cloud. Amazon reports that a number of organizations are tapping into quantum computing in Amazon’s cloud, including the Technology Innovation Institute, a scientific research center that’s a part of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council; Volkswagen Group; Fidelity Center for Applied Technology; Amgen; multinational power company Enel; Aioli, an insurance agency; and the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo.

(3) More qubits than others? Last fall, IBM reported that it has developed a 433-qubit Osprey processor, more qubits than any other IBM processor and more than triple those of the Eagle processor made public in 2021. IBM Quantum System’s goal is to have a system with 4,000 or more qubits by 2025. IBM also hosts a number of companies that want to tap into more than 20 quantum computers in the cloud. The company said German conglomerate Bosch, telecom provider Vodafone, and French bank Credit Mutuel Alliance Federale all have joined IBM’s Quantum Network.

(4) New particles discovered. Qubits are prone to error, so Microsoft has been building a better mousetrap. Company scientists are building qubits from quasiparticles, “which are not true particles but collective vibrations that can emerge when particles like electrons act together,” a June 21 article in New Scientist reported. Called “Majorana zero modes,” these antiparticles have a charge and energy that equate to zero and make “unprecedentedly reliable” qubits.

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