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US gaming and computer graphics giant Nvidia has joined forces with an Israeli startup to roll out a new hardware system to connect the quantum computer with classical computers.

The new system, Nvidia DGX Quantum, built together with Israel’s Quantum Machines, a developer of a standard universal language for quantum computers, is expected to be first deployed at Israel’s quantum computing research center at the end of this year.

The quantum computing R&D center funded by the Israel Innovation Authority at an investment of NIS 100 million ($27 million), which is headed by Quantum Machines, was established to help Israel build a quantum computer and advance research in the field that would lead to future developments in economics, technology, security, engineering, and science.

Accurately reconstructing how the parts of a complex molecular are held together knowing only how the molecule distorts and breaks up—this was the challenge taken on by a research team led by SISSA’s Cristian Micheletti and recently published on Physical Review Letters. In particular, the scientists studied how a DNA double helix unzips when translocated at high velocity through a nanopore, reconstructing fundamental DNA thermodynamic properties from the sole speed of the process.

The translocation of polymers through nanopores has long studied as a fundamental theoretical problem as well as for its several practical ramifications, e.g. for genome sequencing. We recall that the latter involves driving a DNA filament through a pore so narrow that only one of the double-helical strands can pass, while the other strand is left behind. As a result, the translocated DNA double helix will necessarily split and unwind, an effect known as unzipping.

The research team, which also includes Antonio Suma from the University of Bari, first author, and Vincenzo Carnevale from Temple University, used a cluster of computers to simulate the process with different driving forces keeping track of the DNA’s unzipping speed, a type of data that has rarely been studied despite being directly accessible in experiments.

A pair of philosophers sounded the alarm on the dystopian applications they see being ushered in by brain-computer interface (BCI) technology.

“This new advancement would also allow the encoding of data on ultrafast laser pulses.”

A team of international physicists, led by the University of Arizona, was able to switch a light signal optically at attosecond rates in order to achieve hitherto unreachable data transfer speeds: one quintillionth of a second is an attosecond.

Continue reading “Record-breaking optical switch study paves way for ultrafast electronics” »

What if you could control a device, not with your hand, but with your mind? Physician and entrepreneur Tom Oxley talks about the implantable brain-computer interface that can change the way we think.

Madhumita Murgia Hi, my name is Madhumita Murgia, and I’m one of the presenters of Tech Tonic. We’re looking for some feedback from our listeners about the show. So if you have a second, please fill out our brief listener survey, which you can find at ft.com/techtonicsurvey.

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In this season of Tech Tonic, we’ve been talking about quantum computers and why some people think they’re so revolutionary. But so far we’ve mainly talked about the things quantum computers can do, or at least what they might be able to do in the future that makes them so groundbreaking: performing calculations that should take centuries in minutes, cracking the unbreakable codes of the internet, dramatically speeding up the development of new drugs and materials. But what we haven’t done yet is look at why they’re able to do these things. What’s going on inside a quantum computer that makes them so extraordinary, so completely different to any computer that’s come before.

Physicists at Delft University of Technology have built a new technology on a microchip by combining two Nobel Prize-winning techniques for the first time. This microchip could measure distances in materials at high precision—for example, underwater or for medical imaging.

Because the technology uses sound vibrations instead of light, it is useful for high-precision position measurements in opaque materials. The instrument could lead to new techniques to monitor the Earth’s climate and human health. The work is now published in Nature Communications.

The microchip mainly consists of a thin ceramic sheet that is shaped like a trampoline. This trampoline is patterned with holes to enhance its interaction with lasers and has a thickness about 1,000 times smaller than the thickness of a hair. As a former Ph.D. candidate in Richard Norte’s lab, Matthijs de Jong studied the small trampolines to figure out what would happen if they pointed a simple laser beam at them.

This appears to be the year that IBM’s Quantum Computing program reaches the tipping point. IBM and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation just announced the first deployment of an onsite, private sector, IBM-managed quantum computer in the United States. However, beyond the placement of a 127-qubit IBM Eagle quantum processor in a cafeteria at Cleveland Clinic’s main campus, this announcement signals a major leap forward for quantum computing applications.

Of course, the most immediate question is, why install a quantum computer in a cafeteria? Although this may seem like a frivolous question, it gets to a major point of this article. The IBM Eagle class quantum processor has been installed in a highly visible location in the Cleveland Clinic so that biomedical researchers and physicians can start thinking about the most productive ways to use this resource. These are very early days for the development of quantum computing applications, so installing the IBM Eagle quantum processor in the cafeteria, visited daily by nearly everyone working at the Cleveland Clinic, seems like an extremely creative way of keeping the machine ever present in the minds of people working at the facility.

Dr Lara Jehi, who became Cleveland Clinic’s first Chief Research Information Officer in 2020, said that there are many areas of interest in medical research with computational ceilings that block further advances. Quantum processing may help break through those ceilings. Researchers at Cleveland Clinic, working with IBM data scientists, combed through the possible avenues for research, discipline by discipline, to identify the projects most likely to bear fruit when matched to quantum processing’s current capabilities. “Quantum is still a nascent technology,” said Jehi.

“We have taken a vital first step towards harnessing quantum light for practical use.”

Scientists have for the first time shown that they can control and distinguish tiny quantities of interacting photons — or packets of light energy — with high correlation, according to a study published in Nature.

Harnessing quantum light for practical use.

Continue reading “Scientists ‘control’ quantum light for the first time, achieving landmark” »