Lifeboat Foundation

Quantum computers hold the promise of performing certain tasks that are intractable even on the world’s most powerful supercomputers. In the future, scientists anticipate using quantum computing to emulate materials systems, simulate quantum chemistry, and optimize hard tasks, with impacts potentially spanning finance to pharmaceuticals.

However, realizing this promise requires resilient and extensible hardware. One challenge in building a large-scale quantum computer is that researchers must find an effective way to interconnect quantum information nodes—smaller-scale processing nodes separated across a computer chip. Because quantum computers are fundamentally different from classical computers, conventional techniques used to communicate electronic information do not directly translate to quantum devices. However, one requirement is certain: Whether via a classical or a quantum interconnect, the carried information must be transmitted and received.

To this end, MIT researchers have developed a quantum computing architecture that will enable extensible, high-fidelity communication between superconducting quantum processors. In work published in Nature Physics, MIT researchers demonstrate step one, the deterministic emission of single photons—information carriers—in a user-specified direction. Their method ensures quantum information flows in the correct direction more than 96 percent of the time.

We are living a data revolution in the biomedical field, and scientific research is advancing at an unprecedented speed to improve modern medicine. One of the key aspects of such medicine is the tailoring of treatments to each patient, by analising the specific changes that led to disease along with the unique characteristics with which the person was born. The use of supercomputers is essential to make sense of the vast amounts of data, and to simulate aspects of our bodies to calculate for instance which drug is more appropriate for each patient for a given disease.

This video showcases some of the research done at the Life Sciences Department of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, contributing to a better understanding of our bodies in health and disease, and to a future where a Human Digital Twin can help to live healthier and longer.

The race is on to develop a quantum computer that can outpace a conventional supercomputer, and researchers from around the world are full-steam ahead. If scaled to adequate sizes, quantum computers represent the largest leap forward in computing for decades, carrying the potential to leave our current machines in the dust, but significant hurdles still remain.

Now, a team of researchers from China have created a superconducting quantum processor with 66 functional qubits which, when faced with a complex sampling task, was able to blast past even the most powerful supercomputers and complete it in just a fraction of the time. What makes the research so impressive is how it demonstrates a huge leap towards quantum primacy, a milestone in which quantum computers complete a task that is infeasible for a conventional computer to complete.

Germany will host JUPITER, Europe’s entry into the exascale realm.

A quantum computer has been connected to Europe’s fastest supercomputer. It may be a step towards a new type of computing that combines traditional and quantum computers to quickly solve complex problems.

The promise of quantum computers is that they will eventually complete calculations that are impossible for the most powerful conventional computers. Though many researchers are working on perfecting quantum computers, many are also suggesting that existing, imperfect quantum computers could be more useful if connected to traditional supercomputers.

In the cons column, quantum computers are hard to use, require a very controlled set up to operate, and have to contend with “decoherence” or losing their quantum state which gives weird results. They’re also rare, expensive, and for most tasks, way less efficient than a traditional computer.

Still, a lot of these issues can be offset by combining a quantum computer with a traditional computer, just as VTT has done. Researchers can create a hybrid algorithm that has LUMI, the traditional supercomputer, handle the parts it does best while handing off anything that could benefit from quantum computing to HELMI. LUMI can then integrate the results of HELMI’s quantum calculations, perform any additional calculations necessary or even send more calculations to HELMI, and return the complete results to the researchers.

Finland is now one of few nations in the world with a quantum computer and a supercomputer, and LUMI is the most powerful quantum-enabled supercomputer. While quantum computers are still a way from being broadly commercially viable, these kinds of integrated research programs are likely to accelerate progress. VTT is currently developing a 20-qubit quantum computer with a 50-qubit upgrade planned for 2024.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently provided a teaser on what will be happening during the company’s AI Day 2 event this Friday. Considering Musk’s recent comments, it appears that AI Day 2 will be filled to the brim with exciting discussions and demos of next-generation tech.

This is not Tesla’s first AI Day. Last year, the electric vehicle maker held a similar event, outlining the company’s work in artificial intelligence. During the event, Tesla held an extensive discussion on its neural networks, Dojo supercomputer, and humanoid robot, the Tesla Bot (Optimus). Interestingly enough, mainstream coverage of the event later suggested that AI Day was underwhelming or disappointing.

The merged computing power can give rise to faster and more accurate machine learning applications.

Last month, LUMI, the fastest supercomputer in Europe, was connected to HELMI, Finland’s first quantum computer, a five-qubit system operational since 2021. This makes Finland the first country in Europe to have created such a hybrid system — it is one of the few countries worldwide to have done the same.

LUMI is famous — the supercomputer ranks third in the latest Top 500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputer and can carry out 309 petaflops. LUMI, too became operational in 2021.

Continue reading “Europe’s fastest supercomputer just connected to a quantum computer in Finland — here’s why” »

When trying to make a purchase with a shopping app, we may quickly browse the recommendation list while admitting that the machine does know about us—at least, it is learning to do so. As an effective emerging technology, machine learning (ML) has become pretty much pervasive with an application spectrum ranging from miscellaneous apps to supercomputing.

Dedicated ML computers are thus being developed at various scales, but their productivity is somewhat limited: the workload and development cost are largely concentrated in their software stacks, which need to be developed or reworked on an ad hoc basis to support every scaled model.

To solve the problem, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) proposed a fractal parallel computing model and published their research in Intelligent Computing on Sept. 5.