Quantum Landscape

Will the EU’s magnificent Flagship win the geopolitical Quantum race?

The splendour of Vienna’s Hofburg Palace saw the kickoff of the 20 projects that are the initial phase of the Europe’s €1b Quantum Flagship programme. The vision on display was impressive and wide ranging. It was also constrained by the limited resources so far committed and the unique politics of the EU. The Quantum Flagship…

Beating Quantum Winter

Beating quantum winter: opportunities further up the quantum value chain

The development of large scale quantum computers is expected to be a decade long journey. Some predict a quantum winter before early investors see returns. This need not be the case for those willing to look more widely. Quantum computing is the poster child of the emerging quantum technology sector. However, the same underlying technologies…

Quantum Safe Cryptography

The world is waking up to the need for quantum safe cryptography

A new quantum network has been launched in the UK and quantum initiatives are underway at telecom players SK Telecom, BT, Telefónica and Huawei – the world is starting to prepare in earnest for the advent of large scale quantum computers. Quantum computers promise to bring a remarkable range of benefits to industry and society. …

Quantum Startups

Finding winners: quantum startups

Quantum computing makes headlines, but its sister technologies of quantum cryptography and quantum sensing are reaching market sooner. The first quantum revolution began in 1901 when Max Planck showed that the light emitted from a heated black-body consists of discrete quanta, later dubbed photons. Nature turns out to be built in its entirety on the…

Quantum strategy

Quantum hardware in the NISQ era

Excitement mounts as we approach a demonstration of quantum supremacy. However a very long road remains to build a fault tolerant quantum computer Quantum hardware announcements continue to come at speed: Google has just announced Bristlecone, a 72 superconducting qubit device (though it remains to be seen if it can maintain the high fidelity performance of its…

Quantum strategy

Quantum software in the NISQ era

A battle is starting for influence over future quantum software platforms. This will have long term implications. Break through announcements in quantum hardware continue to gather apace. While we are still a long way from a universal fault tolerant quantum computer, we are about to enter a period where noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) technology is a reality. A…

UK National Quantum Technologies Showcase 2017

The breadth of the UK national quantum technology programme is impressive. Four flavours of qubit technology were on display, but its not just quantum computing , cryptography, sensors and imaging were just as strongly represented. Now in its third year, the momentum really shows.  Hand portable and chip scale devices that are at or near…

D-Wave Systems 2000Q

D-Wave Systems on the rugged frontier

D-Wave Systems hosted a seminar at SC17, the leading high performance computing mega conference. This featured something still rare in the world of quantum computing – insight from genuine end users. Bo Ewald, President of D-Wave International, introduced the seminar with an accessible survey of the alternative approaches to creating quantum devices. This is a…