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Category: supercomputing – Page 73

D-Wave, the Canadian quantum computing company, today announced that it is giving anyone who is working on responses to the COVID-19 free access to its Leap 2 quantum computing cloud service. The offer isn’t only valid to those focusing on new drugs but open to any research or team working on any aspect of how to solve the current crisis, be that logistics, modeling the spread of the virus or working on novel diagnostics.

One thing that makes the D-Wave program unique is that the company also managed to pull in a number of partners that are already working with it on other projects. These include Volkswagen, DENSO, Jülich Supercomputing Centre, MDR, Menten AI, Sigma-i Tohoku University, Ludwig Maximilian University and OTI Lumionics. These partners will provide engineering expertise to teams that are using Leap 2 for developing solutions to the Covid-19 crisis.

As D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz told me, this project started taking shape about a week and a half ago. In our conversation, he stressed that teams working with Leap 2 will get a commercial license, so there is no need to open source their solutions and won’t have a one-minute per month limit, which are typically the standard restrictions for using D-Wave’s cloud service.

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Quantum-computing vendor D-Wave Systems Inc. said Tuesday it is giving researchers and companies studying the novel coronavirus free access to its early-stage, experimental machines over the cloud.

Canadian firm D-Wave is among several technology companies providing free advanced computing resources to researchers working to combat the global pandemic. International Business Machines Corp., for example, in March started offering free remote access to two of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.

D-Wave has assembled a team of experts from about a dozen universities and companies including Volkswagen AG, Denso Corp. and startup Menten AI who are familiar with its quantum-computing services to help interested researchers program the computers.

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Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have used Summit, the world’s fastest and most powerful supercomputer, to identify 77 small-molecule drug compounds that might warrant further study in the fight against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.

The team performed simulations of more than 8,000 compounds to screen for those that are most likely to bind to the main “spike” protein of the coronavirus, rendering it unable to infect host cells. They ranked compounds of interest that could have value in experimental studies of the virus.

Earlier this year, when Chinese researchers sequenced the virus, they discovered that it infects the body by one of the same mechanisms as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which spread to 26 countries during an epidemic in 2003. The similarity between the two virus structures and their entry point into a host cell facilitated this latest new study at ORNL.

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The race toward the first practical quantum computer is in full stride. Companies, countries, collaborators, and competitors worldwide are vying for quantum supremacy. Google says it’s already there. But what does that mean? How will the world know when it’s been achieved?

Using , at PNNL have set a mark that a quantum system would need to surpass to establish quantum supremacy in the realm of chemistry.

That’s because the fastest classical computers available today are getting better and better at simulating what a quantum computer will eventually be expected to do. To prove itself in the real world, a quantum computer will need to be able to outdo what a fast supercomputer can do. And that’s where the PNNL-led team have set a benchmark for quantum computers to beat.

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Circa 2019

Google claims it has designed a machine that needs only 200 seconds to solve a problem that would take the world’s fastest supercomputer 10,000 years to figure out.

The speed achieved by the computer represents a breakthrough called “quantum supremacy,” according to a blog post from the company and an accompanying article in the scientific journal Nature.

The results announced Wednesday herald the rise of quantum computers, which can store and process much more information than their classical cousins by tapping into the powerful forces contained in the field of physics known as quantum mechanics.

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Circa 2015

University of Utah engineers have taken a step forward in creating the next generation of computers and mobile devices capable of speeds millions of times faster than current machines.

The Utah engineers have developed an ultracompact beamsplitter—the smallest on record—for dividing light waves into two separate channels of information. The device brings researchers closer to producing silicon photonic chips that compute and shuttle data with light instead of electrons. Electrical and computer engineering associate professor Rajesh Menon and colleagues describe their invention today in the journal Nature Photonics.

Silicon photonics could significantly increase the power and speed of machines such as supercomputers, data center servers and the specialized computers that direct autonomous cars and drones with collision detection. Eventually, the technology could reach home computers and mobile devices and improve applications from gaming to video streaming.

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Researchers in Europe and the UK have managed to connect biological and artificial neurons together – and allow them to communicate long distances through the internet. The biological neurons were grown in one country, sent signals through an artificial synapse located in another to electronic neurons in a third country.

As advanced as supercomputers get, the human brain still utterly leaves them in the dust. It’s made up of neurons that communicate with each other through pulses of electrical signals, passed across tiny gaps known as synapses. These neurons can both process and store information, unlike computers that require separate types of memory for each task.

Artificial versions of neurons and synapses have shown to be far more powerful than traditional computer chip designs, but they’re still in the experimental stage. And now, a team of researchers has taken the next step and connected the artificial and biological versions between three different countries.

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QuTech has resolved a major issue on the road toward a working large-scale quantum computer. QuTech, a collaboration of TU Delft and TNO, and Intel have designed and fabricated an integrated circuit that can controlling qubits at extremely low temperatures. This paves the way for the crucial integration of qubits and their controlling electronics in the same chip. The scientists have presented their research during the ISSCC Conference in San Francisco.

Quantum computers

“This result brings us closer to a large-scale quantum computer which can solve problems that are intractable by even the most powerful supercomputers. Solutions to those problems can make a strong impact on , for instance in the fields of medicine and energy,” said team lead Fabio Sebastiano from QuTech and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science.

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Moving ever closer to the Web v.5.0 – an immersive virtual playground of the Metaverse – would signify a paramount convergent moment that MIT’s Rizwan Virk calls ‘The Simulation Point’ and I prefer to call the ‘Simulation Singularity’. Those future virtual worlds could be wholly devised and “fine-tuned” with a possibility to encode different sets of “physical laws and constants” for our enjoyment and exploration.

We are in the “kindergarten of godlings” right now. One could easily envision that with exponential development of AI-powered multisensory immersive technologies, by the mid-2030s most of us could immerse in “real virtualities” akin to lifestyles of today’s billionaires. Give it another couple of decades, each of us might opt to create and run their own virtual universe with [simulated] physics indistinguishable from the physics of our world. Or, you can always “fine-tune” the rule set, or tweak historical scenarios at will.

How can we be so certain about the Simulation Singularity circa 2035? By our very nature, we humans are linear thinkers. We evolved to estimate a distance from the predator or to the prey, and advanced mathematics is only a recent evolutionary addition. This is why it’s so difficult even for a modern man to grasp the power of exponentials. 40 steps in linear progression is just 40 steps away; 40 steps in exponential progression is a cool trillion (with a T) – it will take you 3 times from Earth to the Sun and back to Earth.

This illustrates the power of exponential growth and this is how the progress in information and communication technologies is now literally exploding – by double-improving price-to-performance ratio roughly once a year. This is why you can see memory cards jumping regularly from 32MB to 64MB, then to 128MB, 256MB and 512MB. This is why your smartphone is as capable as a supercomputer 25 years ago. This is why telecommunication carriers are actively deploying 5G wireless networks, as you read this article.

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