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The team at the DoE has released topics for Phase 1, Release 2, Version 3 SBIR/STTR funding. We are looking into topic 36 (Quantum Information Sciences).
https://twitter.com/chicago_quantum/status/1201639444484366336
https://twitter.com/chicago_quantum/status/1201572898315603969
The key topics are around Superconducting Radio Frequency (SRF), the cold components around the quantum computer, and quantum networking.
Altaf.carim@science.doe.gov is the point of contact for Topic 36.
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We have created an overlapping set of social media assets to share knowledge. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, Medium, ResearchGate, and more. We help clients understand quantum computing and quantum technologies, visualize what is possible in their business, and help them create their quantum advantage through their quantum use case. We published two articles via Medium: https://medium.com/@cohen.sourcing We published about a dozen YouTube videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVyHAGzpYkVsqZ3RM4oQspg/ We also published 2 eBooks (on this site in Use Cases and Platforms). We earned our first revenue, and the team is working on running certain programs and algorithms. Our team's expertise continues to grow.
Written by Jeffrey Cohen, President, US Advanced Computing Infrastructure, Inc. While writing a pitch for quantum computing and our firm to a potential partner, looked for related startups to learn from. Quantum computing is not production-ready. Governments, universities and industry are still developing the technology. A related technology is quantum dots. These are very useful in that they convert light to electricity, and electricity to light in very specific frequencies (read colors). This firm has made some seemingly unrelated, but clever announcements lately about their shift to new markets including blockchain, product tags (e.g., RF tags but cheaper and tamper proof). They have also filed sever SEC documents, so I thought I would take a look. 1) Company overview from early 2019 shows the stress of being a startup (See SEC Filing here). How something like a lawsuit from a previous lender can distract and disturb the ongoing operations. How the promise of a new technology takes time, patience, tenacity and a willingness to play the long-term game. 2) A January 2018 interview with CEO Stephen Squires, found here, gives a solid overview of the company, the technology, and the vision to a non-scientist. 3) The company looks like it is losing about $7M to $8M this year, down from over $9M last year, and is starting to see some revenues (~ $1M) from a manufacturing partnership in India. Why post this? It is a reminder that a new quantum technology that could have far-reaching impacts in both lighting, consumer displays, and possibly quantum computing takes time to develop and commercialize. It starts with a vision, humble beginnings, tenacity and hard work. It starts with humble beginnings. One firm, focusing on lowering the cost of production and application of quantum dots in LED displays by 50% to 80%, is on a long journey. They figured out that they could spray the dots right on the LED bulbs instead of on a firm that is then integrated into the display. The film is expensive. Is this a fairly priced stock? Not sure...after a few hours of homework there is much to consider. For example, SEC filings show a delay in releasing their most recent 10Q and 10K. There is that lawsuit the CEO mentioned. Seeking Alpha entry shows about $3M in debt, and near-zero revenue. 52 week range is $.02 to $.06. This is a near zero revenue bet on a future investment. Nanoco Group PLC is a competitor that we blogged about earlier...how are they doing? Here is a picture of the 5 year stock price chart for QTMM (thank you Yahoo Finance):  US Advanced Computing Infrastructure Inc., nor Jeffrey Cohen, nor any related persons have a position in QTMM, nor are we receiving compensation for writing this BLOG entry. This is not investment advice.
This is a discussion of a quantum technology startup running a marathon to commercialization success.  Words we tweeted most frequently from July 1 - Sept 4 2019:
161 quantum 46 Thank 41 computing 31 like 31 will 30 just 27 Great 23 article 23 PQC 22 energy 21 can 20 QuantumComputing 20 Jeff 19 Chicago 18 classical 17 model 17 use 16 via 15 restrictions 15 NIST 14 theoretical 14 Cohen 13 efficiency 13 published 13 scale 13 10x 12 security 12 startup 12 read 11 Congratulations 11 technology 11 computers 11 business 11 scale-up 11 maths 11 need 11 time 10 supercomputers 10 system 10 first 10 work Thank you www.wordclouds.com. Just published. I was Tweeting about something I want to be true, but my colleagues disagreed. So, here is the math and model to scale a quantum computing system. It shows that today’s quantum computers are 10x more energy efficient than classical supercomputers, ceteris paribus. 당신의 의견에 감사드립니다. 한국 온라인 게임 '플래시 사이트'는 아직 TLS 1.3 보안 프로토콜을 사용합니까? BTW, 나는 Niantic 게임을한다. Thank you for your comment. Do Korean online gaming 'flash sites' use TLS 1.3 security protocol yet? BTW, I play Niantic games. For our first client, we will create a multi-dimensional space in which to pull random samples in a quasi-monte carlo simulation. We will use classical computing for ETL and to create the vectors (one per dimension), then use a quantum computer for the 'hard parts.' Then, we will feed the answers into classical computers...and ultimately a Microsoft Word document. It is relatively easy (based on decades of training and experience) to understand business requirements, and challenging to figure out the mathematical approach. However, it is very challenging to figure out how to explain what we are doing...in plain business language. This is my challenge today...thoughts welcome. Regards, Jeffrey Cohen 
Response to the BLOG Post (July 11, 2019)
Jeffrey Cohen, President, US Advanced Computing Infrastructure, Inc. On July 2, 2019, the founder blogged about the challenge of converting quantum computing into business language. He discussed our first beta client, a pizza chain, and how we were going to optimize pizza delivery. It was full of jargon and clever math terms like ‘quasi-Monte Carlo simulation,’ vectors, dimensions, and even ETL (extract, transform and load) the data. We could have discussed stochastic sampling if we liked. This is not helpful in most business or social contexts. People ask about the business and ‘hey, what’s quantum’ and expect an answer they can relate to. Sean, an office colleague, asked about the business yesterday. We spoke about generalities (sales, revenue, hiring, marketing, collaboration, etc.) and then our current client challenge. Here is how I explained the work. Do you gamble with cards? Games like poker or blackjack? “Sure”, he said. You know the computer games where you practice hands at home? If you win 400 out of 500 hands you feel ready to go to the casino and bet real money, but it usually does not work out that way when you go. That is because today’s computers and phones are not good at being random. Quantum computers work super-fast with probabilities and lots of choices. They can also be very random, like the nature it is based on. He said, “So, when you measure it, it’s over, right? Like Schroedinger’s Cat?” Yes, when you ask for the answer, you get the best answer at that moment…a real number. To be sure, you can ask it to repeat the problem and take the most common answer. That answer is what you use. So, you do the up-front calculations and preparation on a regular computer, then call the quantum computer, then go back to regular computers (or write a report) to use the answer. Back to winning at cards. So, imagine we could deal truly random cards. If you won 400 out of 500 hands, you would be more confident heading to the casino (which we believe is random). This made sense to him. Run an analysis many times, using truly random input, and take the most common answer. For pizza delivery, we would also look at the distribution of answers to understand our confidence with the operational, mathematical model we built based on truly random samples of their data. As an aside, post-quantum security requires large amounts of random numbers to create keys to encrypt communications. This is why we see firms pair up quantum key distribution (QKD) and quantum random number generators (QRNG). Key take-aways:
Hope you enjoyed this BLOG post. Jeffrey Cohen @Chicago_Quantum (Twitter) Https://www.chicagoquantum.com +1.312.515.7333 (cell) The third of three new exa-scale computers set to be purchased and built by Secretary Rick Perry and the Department of Energy. Robin Goldstone, a solution architect at LLNL, gave an interview at the Red Hat Summit 2019. She suggested el capitan will be 10x the performance of Sierra (which is 125 petaflops, and "so El Capitan's targeted to be 1.2, maybe 1.5 exaFLOPS, or even more. Again, that's peak performance, it doesn't necessarily translate into what our applications can get out of the platform." In concept, we can use this to "push a workload through 10 times faster or we can look at a simulation that's 10 times more resolved" (better detail). There will be an El Capitan Center of Excellence at LLNL (deployment and production use from 2023 - 2038). It should focus on AI and machine learning, and advancing the goal of intelligent simulation or cognitive computing. El Capitan (ATS-4) is the successor to Sierra, and will be succeeded by (ATS-6) in 2027-2028 timeframe. In March 2019's DoE FY2020 Congressional Budget Justification: Highlights of the FY 2020 Budget:
LLNL needs more computing capability to achieve and advance its mission. "More computing capability is needed." (Original in bold.) Good one pagers on the DoE Exascale Computing Project (ECP) (thank you Rick Stevens, Argonne National Laboratory & The University of Chicago):   Sources:
https://video.cube365.net/v/Plqw-LotHfo https://asc.llnl.gov/content/assets/docs/ElCap_IntelligentSimCOE_whitepaper.pdf https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/supercomputers/ats-4 https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/04/f62/doe-fy2020-budget-volume-1.pdf http://www.sci.utah.edu/~chris/Rick-Stevens-DSCI-Lecture-2019.pdf https://exascale.llnl.gov/ https://www.exascaleproject.org/ By Jeffrey Cohen, @chicago_quantum, Founder of Chicago Quantum. June 10, 2019 Seven facts about Frontier (from the sources): - Weighs over a million pounds - Performance equals the world's top 160 fastest supercomputers. - Performance of 1.5 exaflops, equals 1.5 quintillion operations per second, equals 1.5 x billion x billion operations per second. - Partnership between Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), U.S. Department of Energy, Cray and AMD, with a Cray contract including $6oom for a CoE, early delivery systems, the main Frontier system, and multi-year system support. - Cray Programming Environment (Cray PE) will be enhanced in 3 ways: enhanced high-level software development environment, integrated with AMD technology with Cray Slingshot to take better advantage of the hardware, and integrated with a full machine-learning software stack. - Establish a Center of Excellence by Cray and Oak Ridge National Lab Frontier will be based on Cray's architecture, AMD's CPU and GPU technologies. - Lawrence Livermore Lab will have an exascale computer too (pre-announced), and Argonne National Lab's Aurora @ 1.0 exaflops was recently announced (Intel and Cray for $500M). Sources: https://www.cray.com/resources/how-frontier-measures-up https://www.cray.com/blog/doe-and-cray-announce-exascale-supercomputer-frontier/#comment-757096 http://investors.cray.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=98390&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2397457 Implications: While Energy Secretary Rick Perry discusses how we will 'win' the race to develop quantum computers, he is ensuring the U.S. has access to exascale classical computing too. Start watching this video, here: https://youtu.be/KnxLoScPCcQ, or here: https://quantumxc.com/watch-quantum-xchanges-tedx-talk/ at 5:39:45 to hear John Prisco, CEO of Quantum Xchange, discuss how QKD works, why we need it, and the general context of encryption. I took away three key points: 1) the Chinese government has a 1,240 mile QKD link between Beijing and Shanghai, showing this can happen over land...over long distances, 2) they also have a satellite link that uses QKD, showing this can happen through space, and 3) Quantum Xchange has their link in the Holland Tunnel (and in fiber cables around the East Coast). I read somewhere else that the US can now do this via an airplane and ground station, allowing for secure communications to aircraft. OK, so the video only covered points 1 and 2. I learned the 3rd point today from a news article that @Quantum_Xchange tweeted. Here is Quantum Xchange's website: https://quantumxc.com/ So, how does it work? We entangle photons (each is '1' or '0' and together those bits make up a quantum inspired algorithm key) and send them down the link. If somebody tries to look at them, they lose their entanglement and change. They show someone looked (tamper apparent). It is like Schroedinger's Cat...if someone looks the wave function collapses, and quantum values collapse to classical ones. Pretty cool stuff. Photonics based networking. Speed of light, slowed by repeaters and other equipment. I am still waiting for data teleportation and instantaneous communication of states between photons and electrons (if I do something here, it immediately determines the value there...and there could be very far away). Thank you for reading. Jeffrey Cohen, May 30, 2019, Founder & CEO of Chicago Quantum, a division of US Advanced Computing Infrastructure, Inc. Another update on June 6, 2019. I just posted yesterday about British Telecom (BT) going live with their 125km QKD network in England in March 2019 on this website. I tweeted on it @chicago_quantum.
Looks like BT has been working on this since 1993 (when they sent their first quantum encrypted message). |
Jeff CohenStrategic IT Management Consultant with a strong interest in Quantum Computing. Consulting for 29 years and this looks as interesting as cloud computing was in 2010. Archives
December 2019
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