Quantum computing: Honeywell just quadrupled the power of its computer

[Hamartia Antidote]

Quantum computing: Honeywell just quadrupled the power of its computer

Honeywell's H1 quantum system has reached a record-high quantum volume.

www.zdnet.com

Honeywell's quantum scientists have quadrupled the capabilities of the company's quantum computer, with the device achieving record levels of performance less than a year after the first generation of the system was released.

The System Model H1, a ten-qubit quantum computer, effectively reached a quantum volume of 512 – four times as much as was attained in the previous tweak of the system, which saw the H1 reach a quantum volume of 128.

Released commercially last June (at the time as the System Model H0), the H1 makes use of trapped ions, unlike IBM and Google's devices, which are built with superconducting qubits. Honeywell's new record is eight times as much as was achieved with the System Model H0, which launched with a quantum volume of 64.

Quantum volume is a concept that IBM developed in 2017 as a way of measuring various aspects of a quantum computer's performance; in simple terms, the higher the quantum volume, the higher the potential for resolving real-world problems across industry and research. Designed to be independent of the architecture of any given quantum computer, quantum volume can measure any system that runs quantum circuits.

For example, one measurement that is indicative of a quantum computer's capabilities is qubit fidelity, which is critical to understanding how well a device can implement quantum code. According to Honeywell, the average single-qubit gate fidelity in the latest version of the H1 was 99.991%.

The final number that determines quantum volume is an aggregate of many other measurements and tests of a single quantum system's operations: they include the number of physical qubits in the quantum computer, but also the device's error rate, and connectivity, which reflects the extent to which qubits can be fully connected to each other within the device.


This is why it is possible for a quantum system to reach a high quantum volume, even with few qubits. Despite having only ten qubits, for instance, Honeywell's System Model H1 performs well when it comes to error rates and connectivity, which has earned the device a top spot for its overall capabilities. In comparison, last year IBM's 27-qubit client-deployed system achieved a quantum volume of 64.

The new milestone, therefore, has prompted Honeywell's president of quantum solutions Tony Uttley to describe the System Model H1 as "the highest performing quantum computing system in the world."

Honeywell has made no secret of its strategy, which consists of focusing on qubit fidelity and connectedness, before attempting to scale up the number of qubits. "When you hear about fidelity and error, that's about the quality of the quantum operation," Uttley told ZDNet. "It's about knowing how often you get the right answer when you run these quantum algorithms."

"We have taken one approach that is very unique when it comes to how to get the most out of these near-term systems," he continued. "Nobody is talking about millions of qubits right now – we're talking about tens of qubits. To get the most out of these tens of qubits, you have to have super-high fidelity, fully-connected and highly-controlled systems. That's our approach."

Making these highly reliable systems available to Honeywell's customers now enables businesses to test and trial with small-scale applications while waiting for the company to design and build new generations of more capable quantum computers, according to Uttley.

Honeywell recently introduced the first subscription-based plan for the usage of the H1, which grants paying customers a monthly access to the machine.

With only ten qubits, there is little that the device can achieve on top of proofs of concepts, designed to be implemented in full scale once a larger computer is available; but high-profile customers are nevertheless flocking to Honeywell's services.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Honeywell says quantum computers will outpace standard verification in ’18 to 24 months’

Honeywell says quantum computing platforms are approaching a processing milestone that conventional computers can't simulate.

venturebeat.com

Honeywell expects that as advances in quantum computing continue to accelerate over the next 18 to 24 months, the ability to replicate the results of a quantum computing application workload using a conventional computing platform simulation will come to an end.

The company’s System Model H1 has now quadrupled its performance capabilities to become the first commercial quantum computer to attain a 512 quantum volume. Ascertaining quantum volume requires running a complex set of statistical tests that are influenced by the number of qubits, error rates, connectivity of qubits, and cross-talk between qubits. That approach provides a more accurate assessment of a quantum computer’s processing capability that goes beyond simply counting the number of qubits that can be employed.

Honeywell today provides access to a set of simulation tools that make it possible to validate the results delivered on its quantum computers on a conventional machine. Those simulations give organizations more confidence in quantum computing platforms by allowing them to compare results. However, quantum computers are now approaching a level where at some point between 2022 and 2023 that will no longer be possible, Honeywell Quantum Solutions president Tony Uttley said.

Honeywell has pursued an approach to quantum computing that differs from those of rivals by focusing its efforts on a narrower range of more stable qubits. Each system is based on a trapped-ion architecture that leverages numerous individual charged atoms (ions) to hold information. It then applies electromagnetic fields to hold (trap) each ion in a way that allows it to be manipulated and encoded using laser pulses.

The company makes its quantum computers available via a subscription to a cloud service and counts BMW, DHL, JP Morgan Chase, and Samsung among its customers. Systems residing outside of Boulder, Colorado and Minneapolis are made available to customers for up to two weeks at a time before being taken offline for two weeks to add additional capacity.

Subscriptions for the System Model H1 service are currently sold out, and each Honeywell quantum computing customer has previously tried to employ a different platform before switching to Honeywell, Uttley said. The company is now moving toward making a third-generation System Model H2 service available that will offer higher levels of unspecified quantum volume, Uttley added.

Honeywell has committed to delivering a tenfold increase in quantum volume every five years. The company has been able to deliver a fourfold increase in the amount of quantum volume it can make available in the last five months alone, Uttley said.

Quantum computers can process bits that have a value of both 0 and 1 at the same time, which makes them more powerful than conventional computing platforms. Advances in quantum computing, however, will by no means signal the demise of conventional computers, Uttley added. Instead, it’s becoming apparent that quantum computers and conventional computers are simply going to be better suited to running different classes of workloads, Uttley said.

“These systems will run side by side for decades,” Uttley added. “Conventional computing platforms are not going to be replaced anytime soon.”

Quantum computers, however, are better suited to addressing complex computational challenges involving chemistry, routing optimizations using, for example, logistics and traffic management applications, and even the training of AI models. In the latter case, a quantum computer can identify the starting point for the training of an AI model that would then be completed by a conventional computer. Other more intractable problems involving, for example, applications for ways to reduce the level of carbon in the atmosphere are only feasible to run on a quantum computing platform.

It may still be a while before quantum computing delivers on its full promise, but while the way quantum systems work may not be widely understood, there is now no turning back.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Quantum computer based on shuttling ions is built by Honeywell – Physics World

Design could allow large numbers of qubits to be integrated in one device

physicsworld.com

Quantum computer based on shuttling ions is built by Honeywell

A quantum charged coupled device – a type of trapped-ion quantum computer first proposed 20 years ago – has finally been fully realized by researchers at Honeywell in the US. Other researchers in the field believe the design, which offers notable advantages over other quantum computing platforms, could potentially enable quantum computers to scale to huge numbers of quantum bits (qubits) and fully realize their potential.


Trapped-ion qubits were used to implement the first quantum logic gates in 1995, and the proposal for a quantum charged coupled device (QCCD) – a type of quantum computer with actions controlled by shuffling the ions around – was first made in 2002 by researchers led by David Wineland of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, who went on to win the 2012 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work.

Quantum gates have subsequently been demonstrated in multiple platforms, from Rydberg atoms to defects in diamond. The quantum computing technology first used by IT giants, however, was solid state qubits. In these, the qubits are superconducting circuits, which can be mounted directly on to a chip. These rapidly surpassed the benchmarks set by trapped ions, and are used in record-breaking machines from IBM and Google: “Working with trapped ions, I would be asked by people, ‘Why aren’t you working with superconducting qubits? Isn’t that race pretty much already settled?’,” says Winfried Hensinger of the UK’s University of Sussex.

Progress is slowing
Recently, however, the progress made using superconducting circuits appears to be slowing as quantum computers integrate more and more qubits. To interact properly, the qubits must be identical and, whereas two copies of the same ion are guaranteed by quantum mechanics to be indistinguishable, fabricating identical circuits is near-impossible. Fabrication directly onto a chip also places superconducting circuits in thermal equilibrium with the chip: “If you build a superconducting qubit-based quantum computer, you have to cool that machine all the way to millikelvin temperatures,” says Hensinger. “That works fine if you have 10, 100…maybe 1000 qubits, but it’s going to be really challenging when you go to really large numbers.”

Some large companies have recently shown interest in the trapped ion platform, among them the multinational technology conglomerate Honeywell, which formed Honeywell Quantum Systems in 2020 to focus solely on the technology.

The firm’s latest result, unveiled in Nature, is the first demonstration of a fully functional QCCD. The device uses ytterbium-171 ions as qubits, which are chilled to their quantum ground states by barium-138 ions using a process called sympathetic cooling. The setup is contained in a linear trap above a chip cooled to around 10 K in a vacuum chamber. Ions held within the trap are shuffled between positions by dynamic electric fields, while quantum logical operations on the ions are performed by laser beams.

Teleported CNOT gate
The researchers demonstrate a sufficient set of gates to perform universal quantum logic. In addition, they created a teleported CNOT gate, which allows for non-destructive mid-circuit measurement – a crucial component for quantum error correction.

Their device has only six qubits, compared to 53 superconducting qubits in Google’s Sycamore – the machine with which Google claimed quantum advantage in 2019. However, Honeywell’s computer is arguably more powerful because of the flexibility of the QCCD architecture: “These ions are fully connected,” explains team member David Hayes; “With superconducting qubits or things like them, you can’t have a qubit over here talk to a qubit over there if there’s a whole bunch of qubits in the way – you have to move that information through there, and there’s a whole bunch of errors that will accumulate along the way.”

Hensinger is impressed with the Honeywell device: “This is really a phase change now we have a complete machine built on a shuttling-based approach,” he says; “It has been demonstrated with all the key ingredients. People often ask me when we can have a million-qubit machine: obviously there are still many, many challenges to be overcome, but I think this [research] demonstrates that it is a straight engineering path.”

Chris Monroe of University of Maryland, College Park, a co-author of Wineland’s on the original 2002 paper, who now runs the spin-off company IonQ, agrees: “In this field, every single little piece has been demonstrated separately. One of the important features of this work is that it integrated lots of them in one system. I love the QCCD idea: I actually coined that phrase myself.” He cautions, however, that, “the QCCD works great with six or eight ions, but when you get to 80, 200 or 300 ions, to enjoy that full connectivity you’re going to be spending a lot of time separating chains, moving ions around, getting them into position, doing the gate and then returning them to where they were.”

 

[Kruelwrld]

IBM,Google and Honeywell are going crazy with quantum computers. They all been trying to one up one another. Competition is good to see, and let's not forget the start-ups like IonQ who are making progress.