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Stealth Quantum Computing Company raises $215M to Build 1M Qbit Computer
PsiQuantum Corp. on Monday said it raised $215 million to help it develop a commercial quantum computer more powerful than machines being developed by Google, IBM, Honeywell, and a host of startups and university labs.
Jeremy O'Brien, co-founder and CEO of the 5-year-old Palo Alto startup, told Bloomberg that the company expects to build a computer with 1 million qubits, or quantum bits, within "a handful of years."
[...] "If they are really able to pull this off, it immediately distinguishes them and puts them in a completely different field so far ahead of the competition," Peter Rohde, a Future Fellow at the Centre for Quantum Software and Information at the University of Technology Sydney, told Bloomberg.
CEO O'Brien and co-founders [...] formed PsiQuantum in Silicon Valley to develop a computer that essentially runs on light.
They have assembled a team of more than 100 to build what is known as a silicon photonic quantum computer.
Samir Kumar, general manager of Microsoft Corp.'s venture capital unit who has invested in PsiQuantum, put in perspective what the company says its machine will be able to do: "By the time you get to 80 qubits, you are in a place where the qubits are storing more information than the total number of atoms in the entire universe."
Quantum Computing Startup Raises $215 Million for Faster Device
PsiQuantum's photon-based model is still years away, but the company says it'll be more powerful than Google's or IBM's.
PsiQuantum, a 5-year-old startup based in Palo Alto, Calif., says it's well on its way to creating a commercial quantum machine, the boldest claim to date among a legion of hopefuls in the field. It has raised $215 million to build a computer with 1 million qubits, or quantum bits, within "a handful of years," co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeremy O'Brien tells Bloomberg Businessweek. While the qubit figure will mean little to people outside the industry, it's considered the breakthrough point for making a true, general-purpose quantum computer that would be broadly useful to businesses. As such, PsiQuantum's machine would mark a major leap forward and deal a devastating blow to rival projects by the likes of Google, Honeywell, IBM, and a sea of startups and university labs. "If they are really able to pull this off, it immediately distinguishes them and puts them in a completely different field so far ahead of the competition," says Peter Rohde, a Future Fellow at the Centre for Quantum Software & Information at the University of Technology Sydney. "This strikes me as incredibly exciting."
The "if" from Rohde reflects the challenges of quantum computing and, partly, the secrecy that has surrounded PsiQuantum's work. O'Brien's interview with Bloomberg Businessweek is his first detailed discussion of the company's technology since its founding in 2015. The CEO and his co-founders (Terry Rudolph, Mark Thompson, and Pete Shadbolt) are Australian and British academics turned industrialists. Over the past five years, they've hired more than 100 people to help them try to develop what's known as a silicon photonic quantum computer—essentially, a computer that runs on light.
[...] These properties, in theory, allow quantum computers to achieve a quantum speedup, which grows exponentially as more qubits are added to the system. The ramifications are mind-blowing. "By the time you get to 80 qubits, you are in a place where the qubits are storing more information than the total number of atoms in the entire universe," says Samir Kumar, general manager of Microsoft Corp.'s venture capital arm, which has invested in PsiQuantum. Practically speaking, this means large calculations that would take decades or centuries to complete using even modern supercomputers can be performed in minutes on a quantum machine. The belief is this will lead to stunning breakthroughs in chemistry, biology, and other scientific fields.
[...] The techniques PsiQuantum is pursuing were considered virtually impossible to pull off for a time. Among other obstacles, scientists thought a machine based on photonics would have to be incredibly large. "As we began working on this architecture, it appeared that our machine would have to be the size of the Sierra Nevada mountain range," O'Brien says. After a series of research advances, however, his team has set to work building its first computer, which it expects will be the size of an office conference room. GlobalFoundries, one of the world's top chipmakers, has already started producing early versions of PsiQuantum's chips using its standard manufacturing facilities. (This marks a significant contrast with other quantum experiments, which rely on exotic materials and custom manufacturing.) Now it's up to O'Brien's engineers to create quantum variants of the networking, software, and the other components needed to make a functioning computer. "We're going to be building them as fast as you can," O'Brien says.
[...] PsiQuantum's big claim is that its technology will be able to string together 1 million qubits and distill out 100 to 300 error-corrected or "useful" qubits from that total. O'Brien and PsiQuantum's backers question whether Google can ever reach similar qubit totals with its technology. "It is like climbing a tree to get to the moon," says Peter Barrett, a general partner at Playground Global, which invested in PsiQuantum. A Google spokesperson says the company typically does not comment on rivals' work.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 08 2020, @04:10PM (1 child)
** NEVER TAKE THE MARK, AT ALL COSTS! **
-- this article is here for historical reasons, never take the mark! --
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2017/08/09/you-get-chipped-eventually/547336001/ [usatoday.com]
You will get chipped — eventually
Jefferson Graham
USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES — You will get chipped. It’s just a matter of time.
In the aftermath of a Wisconsin firm embedding microchips in employees last week to ditch company badges and corporate logons, the Internet has entered into full-throated debate.
Religious activists are so appalled, they’ve been penning nasty 1-star reviews of the company, Three Square Market, on Google, Glassdoor and social media.
On the flip side, seemingly everyone else wants to know: Is this what real life is going to be like soon at work? Will I be chipped?
“It will happen to everybody,” says Noelle Chesley, 49, associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “But not this year, and not in 2018. Maybe not my generation, but certainly that of my kids.”
Gene Munster, an investor and analyst at Loup Ventures, is an advocate for augmented reality, virtual reality and other new technologies. He thinks embedded chips in human bodies is 50 years away. “In 10 years, Facebook, Google, Apple and Tesla will not have their employees chipped,” he says. “You’ll see some extreme forward-looking tech people adopting it, but not large companies.”
The idea of being chipped has too “much negative connotation” today, but by 2067 “we will have been desensitized by the social stigma,” Munster says.
A microchip is shown compared with a dime Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017, at Three Square Market in River Falls, Wis.,
For now, Three Square Market, or 32M, hasn’t offered concrete benefits for getting chipped beyond badge and log-on stats. Munster says it was a “PR stunt” for the company to get attention to its product and it certainly succeeded, getting the small start-up air play on CBS, NBC and ABC, and generating headlines worldwide. The company, which sells corporate cafeteria kiosks designed to replace vending machines, would like the kiosks to handle cashless transactions.
This would go beyond paying with your smartphone. Instead, chipped customers would simply wave their hands in lieu of Apple Pay and other mobile-payment systems.
The benefits don't stop there. In the future, consumers could zip through airport scanners sans passport or drivers license; open doors; start cars; and operate home automation systems. All of it, if the technology pans out, with the simple wave of a hand.
Not a GPS tracker
The embedded chip is not a GPS tracker, which is what many critics initially feared. However, analysts believe future chips will track our every move.
For example, pets for years have been embedded with chips to store their name and owner contact. Indeed, 32M isn’t the first company to embed chips in employees. In 2001, Applied Digital Solutions installed the “VeriChip” to access medical records but the company eventually changed hands and stopped selling the chip in 2010.
In Sweden, BioHax says nearly 3,000 customers have had its chip embedded to do many things, including ride the national rail system without having to show the conductor a ticket.
In the U.S., Dangerous Things, a Seattle-based firm, says it has sold “tens of thousands” of chips to consumers via its website. The chip and installation cost about $200.
After years of being a subculture, “the time is now” for chips to be more commonly used, says Amal Graafstra, founder of Dangerous Things. “We’re going to start to see chip implants get the same realm of acceptance as piercings and tattoos do now.”
In other words, they’ll be more visible, but not mainstream yet.
“It becomes part of you the way a cellphone does,” Graafstra says. “You can never forget it, and you can’t lose it. And you have the capability to communicate with machines in a way you couldn’t before.”
But after what we saw in Wisconsin last week, what's next for the U.S. workforce? A nation of workers chipping into their pods at Federal Express, General Electric, IBM, Microsoft and other top corporations?
Experts contend consumers will latch onto chips before companies do.
Chesley says corporations are slower to respond to massive change and that there will be an age issue. Younger employees will be more open to it, while older workers will balk. “Most employers who have inter-generational workforces might phase it in slowly,” she says. “I can’t imagine people my age and older being enthusiastic about having devices put into their bodies.”
Adds Alec Levenson, a researcher at University of Southern California’s Center for Effective Organizations, “The vast majority of people will not put up with this.”
Three Square Market said the chips are voluntary, but Chesley says that if a company announces a plan to be chipped, the expectation is that you will get chipped — or risk losing out on advancement, raises and being a team player.
“That’s what we’re worried about,” says Bryan Allen, chief of staff for state Rep. Tina Davis (D), who is introducing a bill in Pennsylvania to outlaw mandatory chip embedding. “If the tech is out there, what’s to stop an employer from saying either you do this, or you can’t work here anymore.”
Several states have passed similar laws, while one state recently saw a similar bill die in committee. "I see this as a worker's rights issue," says Nevada state Sen. Becky Harris (R), who isn't giving up. "This is the wrong place to be moving," she says.
Should future corporations dive in to chipping their employees, they will have huge issues of “trust” to contend with, says Kent Grayson, a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
“You’ve got to have a lot of trust to put one of those in your body,” Grayson says. Workers will need assurances the chip is healthy, can't be hacked, and its information is private, he says.
Meanwhile, religious advocates have taken to social media to express their displeasure about chipping, flooding 32M’s Facebook page with comments like “boycott,” “completely unnecessary” and “deplorable.” On 32M’s Google page, Amy Cosari a minister in Hager City, Wisc., urges employees to remove the chip.
“When Jesus was raised, he was raised body and soul, and it was him, not zombie, not a ghost and we are raised up in the same way,” Cosari wrote. ”Employees of 32Market, you are not a walking debit card.”
Get used to it, counsels Chesley.
Ten years ago, employees didn’t look at corporate e-mail over the weekend. Now they we do, “whether we like it or not,” he says.
Be it wearable technology or an embedded chip, the always on-always connected chip is going to be part of our lives, she says.
Contributing: Madeline Purdue in San Francisco.
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(Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday April 08 2020, @08:10PM
Wow is this the reincarnation of MDC? Naw....Mike never slammed out such a incoherent WOT. With that mystery link in the last sentence, I'd say this comes pretty close to qualifying as SPAM.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--