SoylentNews

Stealth Quantum Computing Company raises $215M to Build 1M Qbit Computer

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2020/04/06/palo-alto-quantum-computing-startup-scores-215m-to.html

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

Anonymous Coward writes:

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.

---

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2