Quantum Untangled: IBM tackles UK quantum skills gap
This week: Congressional anxieties, Big Blue's British talent bet and that LinkedIn post everyone's talking about.
At Quantum Untangled, we like to delve into the important questions about practical quantum computing — like, how long before we get quantum-powered weather forecasting, which nation is winning the battle for the most qubits, or when the complete collapse of encrypted communications as we know them will actually take place. But in these casual sojourns through quantum thickets, it’s easy to lose sight of the smaller picture, so this week we’re taking you on a tour of some of the announcements, think pieces and breakthroughs that you may have missed in the past seven days.
Falling behind
Unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock these past few years, you’ll be aware that the US and China have something of a rivalry when it comes to pursuing technological breakthroughs — not least in quantum. Anxiety about falling behind Beijing resurfaced in Washington on 3 November when the chairman of the House of Representative’s Science, Space and Technology Committee, Republican Frank Lucas joining with Democrat ranking member Zoe Lofgren in introducing the National Quantum Initiative Reauthorization Act.
H.R. 6123, as all the kids are calling it these days, basically resurrects the Trump-era National Quantum Initiative Act, which aimed “to accelerate quantum research and development for the economic and national security of the United States.” The much-anticipated sequel, however, calls for three additional NIST-run research centres, a strategy from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to formulate a quantum R&D strategy with US allies, and a plan from the Secretary of Energy to “develop a strategy for promoting the commercialization of quantum computing.” The price tag? $3 billion according to The Register — though that sounds like chump change when considering the long-term price tag of the Biden administration’s quantum initiatives, not least the Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act. which mandates that all departments in the federal government submit plans to upgrade their encryption lest any secret communications get cracked open by naughty rogue nations.
Education, education, education
Quantum computing has a skills gap — a fact bemoaned by a multitude of start-ups and major companies trying to commercialise the technology. Last week, the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC) and IBM announced its contribution toward bridging the divide between those excited about quantum tech and those who actually know how to use it. The agreement will see Big Blue provide cloud-based access to its roster of quantum computers for UK-based researchers.
The agreement with IBM “will enable the NQCC to provide utility-scale quantum computing resources for the UK’s vibrant research community,” said the NQCC’s director, Dr Michael Cuthbert. This in turn will “open up new avenues of fundamental and applied research, with the prospect of boosting the development of novel technologies and driv[ing] new discoveries,” Cuthbert added.
Photonic funding
What is the French for “my, my, that’s quite a lot of venture capital you’re carrying?”* That was (presumably) the reaction from any and all Paris-based quantum enthusiasts to the news that the French start-up Quandela has raised some $50m in Series B funding to continue flogging its photonic quantum computers to the marketplace at large. According to Sifted, the money — a mixture of debt and equity — was provided by Crédit Mutuel Innovation, venture capital firm Serena, and the European Innovation Council. The announcement came off the back of news that Quandela had successfully sold its first photonic computer to French cloud provider OVHcloud, which was also the first time any quantum computer “was bought and hosted by a private company.”
For those that don’t remember, photonic quantum computers harness light itself to create and measure qubits. They’re particularly exciting to quantum-watchers as, unlike the chandelier-like cooling structures that most stock photography suggests quantum computers use, these machines can be operated at room temperature and, some argue, produce results with greater accuracy than others of their ilk. “In the long term,” Quandela’s founder, Niccolo Somaschi, told Sifted, “photons tick more boxes than others.”
It wasn’t just Quandela that had a good week. Canadian start-up Photonic Inc. announced that it had raised a titanic $100m in its latest funding round, with investors including Microsoft, the UK government’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) and UK deep tech VC fund Amadeus Capital Partners. The UK quantum start-up circuit also prospered, with Cambridge-based Nu Quantum raising a tidy £7 million in a pre-series A Round.
* “Oh la la. Cela représente beaucoup de capital-risque que vous transportez.”
And finally… has RSA-2048 been broken? The answer may not surprise you
Like other members of the Tech Monitor editorial family nightly scouring the pulse of the business community on LinkedIn, you may have happened upon a post that makes some fairly bold claims about the future of communication on the internet as we know it. In a 164-word screed posted last week, Planalto Research founder Ed Gerck announced that his company had effectively broken RSA-2048. “All our QC computations were done in a commercial cellphone, or a commercial Linux desktop, as our QC devices — opening the user market to many industries,” wrote Gerck, above a supersized copy of his LinkedIn profile picture. “No cryogenics or special materials were used.”
Gerck helpfully followed up his initial post with a couple of detailed ‘footnotes’ included as comments. But not everyone was convinced that Planalto Research had made the breakthrough many in the cryptography world fear is inevitable. “The notion of quantum computing operating on a commercial cellphone or standard Linux desktop without the need for cryogenics or special materials is at odds with the current understanding of quantum computing requirements,” read one of the more charitable responses. Others were wary that Gerck seemed unwilling to publish the paper, instead asking that individuals send requests for a copy to a Gmail address. After Tom’s Hardware followed these instructions, however, they were only provided with an abstract to the aforesaid paper. When asked to comment on this sneak preview of the article, cybersecurity expert Professor Alan Woodward did not sound impressed. To Woodward, it seemed to be “all theory proving various conjectures — and those proofs are definitely in question.” Rest assured, Quantum Untangled will keep readers apprised of any further developments.
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