Quantum - Monday, March 3, 2025: Commentary with Notable and Interesting News, Articles, and Papers
Robert Sutor
Quantum Computing and AI, but not necessarily together: Tech Leader, Ph.D., Non-Executive Director, Author, Advisor, Pundit, Keynote Speaker, Professor, Cat Lover
Commentary and a selection of the most important recent news, articles, and papers about Quantum. This newsletter is also available on Substack.
Today’s Brief Commentary:
It was a busy week in the quantum realm, with IonQ releasing Q4 2024 and FY 2024 earnings and getting a new CEO, and Amazon Web Services/ CalTech announcing a cat qubit prototype quantum processing unit.
I really, really like that they called it a prototype. "Here, look what we did. It’s not a product yet. We don’t know that it will change the world, but it looks promising, and let us tell you why." Those are my words, not AWS’s. This might be humility, but AWS doesn’t need outside investment from anyone and can afford to take its time.
While experimenting with a prototype, you should ask yourself, "Can someone actually manufacture one of these things?" We’ve seen several partnerships in this direction, including:
IBM makes its own quantum chips. Two of today’s links concern such partnerships.
To be clear, no one is yet manufacturing hundreds of any QPUs, so we might want to categorize much of this as the very early stages of design for manufacturing and prototype refinement.
Manufacturing design is usually more important for companies beyond their Series A and maybe B funding rounds. Also, if you have 10 qubits and plan to move to more with technology improvements, there may not be any need to know how to build the smaller model.
Don't forget to check out and bookmark my new sortable list of upcoming quantum technology conferences.
Earnings Announcements and Financial Dealings
Rigetti Computing to Report Fourth Quarter 2024 Financial Results and Host Conference Call on March 5, 2025
Date: Monday, February 24, 2025
Excerpt: Rigetti Computing, Inc. (“Rigetti” or the “Company”) (Nasdaq: RGTI), a pioneer in hybrid quantum-classical computing, announced today that it will release fourth quarter 2024 results on March 5, 2025 after market close. The Company will host a conference call to discuss its financial results and provide an update on its business operations at 5:00 p.m. ET the same day.
Sutor Group Earnings Brief: IonQ Announces Financial Results for Q4 2024 and FY 2024
Date: Thursday, February 27, 2025
Excerpt: Revenue up, losses up more, new CEO, majority stake in ID Quantique.
Quantum and AI and Quantum
“Quantum Leap: The Game-Changer in the AI Race?” hosted by Global Alliance on Sustainability & AI (GASAI)
Date: Thursday, February 27, 2025
Commentary: I was please to take part in this online discussion.
Excerpt: What we discussed focusing on substance while cutting through hype and scepticism: How can quantum computing technologies and AI work together? What are the challenges in using quantum computing for AI? Why are so many quantum computing companies talking about AI? How can companies prepare themselves for Q-Day? What are the broader implications of quantum computing on society likely to be? Quantum Chemistry & AI Synergy. How can Quantum AI transform fields like molecular modeling, drug discovery, or materials science? Are there specific breakthroughs on the horizon? What are the biggest hurdles in integrating Quantum AI into real-world applications today? What steps should industries take to prepare for this shift? Do quantum AI agents hold a potential to become a giant step for humanity? How could quantum AI agents be utilized across various fields?
Quantum Computing
[2502.17368] Beyond NISQ: The Megaquop Machine
Author: Preskill, John
Date: Monday, February 24, 2025
Excerpt: Today's Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) computers have scientific value, but quantum machines with broad practical value must be protected against noise using quantum error correction and fault-tolerant protocols. Recent studies of quantum error correction on actual hardware are opening a new era of quantum information processing. Error-corrected computers capable of performing one million quantum operations or more may be realized soon, raising a compelling question for the quantum community: What are the potential uses of these megaquop machines?
The next evolution of IBM Quantum Platform: How to prepare for the transition | IBM
Authors: Julianna Roberts; Leron Gil; Kayla Lee; Fran Cabrera; Sean Dague; and Robert Davis
Date: Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Excerpt: We’re upgrading IBM Quantum Platform with enterprise-grade infrastructure, and releasing an early access preview version of the new Platform that you can begin exploring today. Once it’s complete, the final version of the new IBM Quantum Platform will be very similar to the version you use now, and we’ll ensure that you continue to have access to the documentation and learning resources we’ve traditionally housed there. However, this move gives us the ability to boost performance and roll out powerful features that many of you have been requesting for a long time—features that would be difficult or impossible to deploy with our current infrastructure.
Amazon Web Services announces a new quantum computing chip | Amazon
Date: Thursday, February 27, 2025
Commentary: Note that Alice & Bob has been working with cat qubits for years. See its responses to the AWS announcement below.
Excerpt: AWS used a novel design for Ocelot’s architecture, building error correction in from the ground up and using the ‘cat qubit’. Cat qubits–named after the famous Schr?dinger's cat thought experiment–intrinsically suppress certain forms of errors, reducing the resources required for quantum error correction. Through this new approach with Ocelot, AWS researchers have, for the first time, combined cat qubit technology and additional quantum error correction components onto a microchip that can be manufactured in a scalable fashion using processes borrowed from the microelectronics industry.
Amazon announces Ocelot quantum chip | Amazon science
Authors: Fernando Brand?o and Oskar Painter
Date: Thursday, February 27, 2025
Commentary: “Bosonic” is a word you will be hearing a lot more of from now on when it comes to quantum computers and error correction. The word comes from “boson,” a class of particles named after Satyendra Nath Bose. I ver much like that Amazon refers to this chip as a prototypes.
Excerpt: Prototype is the first realization of a scalable, hardware-efficient quantum computing architecture based on bosonic quantum error correction.
Alice & Bob's responses to AWS Ocelot on LinkedIn
Date: Friday, February 28, 2025
Excerpt: Let's see how it compares to our technology...
Manufacturing Quantum Computers
Rigetti Computing Announces Strategic Collaboration Agreement with Quanta Computer to Accelerate Development and Commercialization of Superconducting Quantum Computing
Date: Monday, February 17, 2025
Commentary: I think their statement about “fast gate speeds” needs a companion statement about “short coherence times,” especially when they compare themselves to trapped ion and neutral atom approaches.
Excerpt: Rigetti Computing, Inc. (Nasdaq: RGTI) (“Rigetti” or the “Company”), a pioneer in full-stack quantum-classical computing, today announced that it has entered into a strategic collaboration agreement with Quanta Computer Inc., (“Quanta”, TWSE: 2382.TW) a Taiwan-based Global Fortune 500 company and the global leader of computer server manufacturing, to accelerate the development and commercialization of superconducting quantum computing.
PsiQuantum Announces Omega, a Manufacturable Chipset for Photonic Quantum Computing
Date: Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Commentary: This represents great progress in design for manufacturability in the quantum industry. If startups can afford to do this, it's an important consideration in getting later stage funding.
Excerpt: Designed by PsiQuantum and manufactured at GlobalFoundries in New York, the new chipset integrates these advances into high-volume, industrially-proven processes – ready for large-scale systems integration. PsiQuantum’s approach is based on using single photons – particles of light – which are then manipulated using silicon photonic chip technology originally developed for telecom and datacenter networking applications. For quantum applications, the company had to improve performance well beyond the state-of-the-art, and introduced new materials into the fab, including a superconducting material used for highly efficient single-photon detection, and Barium Titanate (BTO), an advanced material for low-loss, high speed optical switching which is developed and produced by PsiQuantum in San Jose, California. The company also had to overcome challenges with background noise and low-temperature operation of the chip to demonstrate the circuit performance detailed in the paper – PsiQuantum’s latest measurements include 99.98% single-qubit state preparation and measurement fidelity, 99.5% two-photon quantum interference visibility, and 99.72% chip-to-chip quantum interconnect fidelity.
Research and Technical
[2502.19526] Local Optimization of Quantum Circuits (Extended Version)
Authors: Arora, Jatin; Xu, Mingkuan; Westrick, Sam; Liu, Pengyu; Li, Dantong; Ding, Yongshan; and Acar, Umut A.
Date: Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Excerpt: Recent advances in quantum architectures and computing have motivated the development of new optimizing compilers for quantum programs or circuits. Even though steady progress has been made, existing quantum optimization techniques remain asymptotically and practically inefficient and are unable to offer guarantees on the quality of the optimization. Because many global quantum circuit optimization problems belong to the complexity class QMA (the quantum analog of NP), it is not clear whether quality and efficiency guarantees can both be achieved. In this paper, we present optimization techniques for quantum programs that can offer both efficiency and quality guarantees. Rather than requiring global optimality, our approach relies on a form of local optimality that requires each and every segment of the circuit to be optimal. We show that the local optimality notion can be attained by a cut-and-meld circuit optimization algorithm. The idea behind the algorithm is to cut a circuit into subcircuits, optimize each subcircuit independently by using a specified "oracle" optimizer, and meld the subcircuits by optimizing across the cuts lazily as needed. We specify the algorithm and prove that it ensures local optimality. To prove efficiency, we show that, under some assumptions, the main optimization phase of the algorithm requires a linear number of calls to the oracle optimizer. We implement and evaluate the local-optimality approach to circuit optimization and compare with the state-of-the-art optimizers. The empirical results show that our cut-and-meld algorithm can outperform existing optimizers significantly, by more than an order of magnitude on average, while also slightly improving optimization quality. These results show that local optimality can be a relatively strong optimization criterion and can be attained efficiently.
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Sutor Group Intelligence and Advisory
Dr. Bob Sutor is the CEO and Founder of Sutor Group Intelligence and Advisory. Sutor Group provides broad market insights and deep technical expertise based on over four decades of experience with startups and large corporations. It advises Deep Tech startups, companies, and investors on quantum technologies, AI, enterprise software, and other emerging tech fields.
Sutor Group shares its knowledge and analysis through direct client engagements and seminars, reports, newsletters, books, written and on-air media appearances, and speaking and panel moderation at the top conferences and client events.
Disclosures and Disclaimers
Bob Sutor is a former employee of IBM and Infleqtion and holds equity positions or stock options in each company. He is a Non-Executive Director for Nu Quantum and Advisor to the venture capital firm Forma Prime.
The information contained in newsletters or articles and the resources available on the Sutor Group Intelligence and Advisory website is not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as, legal or financial advice. We are not attorneys, accountants, or financial advisors, nor are we holding ourselves out to be. The information is not a substitute for legal or financial advice from a professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation.
We're definitely in for some serious innovation.
Quantum Computing and AI, but not necessarily together: Tech Leader, Ph.D., Non-Executive Director, Author, Advisor, Pundit, Keynote Speaker, Professor, Cat Lover
1 天前Also here: https://open.substack.com/pub/drbobsutor/p/quantum-monday-march-3-2025-commentary?r=3lqa3p&utm_medium=ios
DevOps & Automation Expert | Kubernetes, Docker, CI/CD Pipelines, Terraform | Cloud Specialist (AWS, Azure, GCP) | AI & ML Innovator | Patent Holder & Certified Jenkins Engineer
1 天前Robert Sutor, thanks for sharing your insights, truly valuable.