Quantum Update: Rigetti, IonQ, the adventures of a quantum-entangled tardigrade and more

So much has been happening on the quantum technology front in recent days that it would be unwise to try to cram it all into one wrap-up story… but we’re going to try anyway:

…Rigetti Computing, which in October announced a plan to go public via a merger with SPAC Supernova Partners II, announced this week it has a new next-generation Aspen-M 80-qubit quantum computer already in private beta. Rigetti described Aspen-M as “the world’s first commercial multi-chip quantum processor,” as it was created using two 40-qubit quantum chips. The announcement also served as the release into general availability of Rigetti’s 40-qubit processor on Rigetti Quantum Cloud Services, the Strangeworks Ecosystem, and Amazon Braket.

And yes, that relationship with quantum service provider Strangeworks is new, too, and part of another announcement the company made this week of its collaboration with Deloitte and Strangeworks, a leading managed quantum service provider, to explore quantum applications in material simulation, optimization, and machine learning using Rigetti’s new scalable processors.  

In addition to more than doubling the processor size over Rigetti’s previous generation superconducting processors, the new units deliver a 2.5x speed-up in quantum processing times and reduce readout errors by up to 50%, the company said

…IonQ has been showing its ready to chase qubits with the quantum computing giants of the world like IBM, Google and Amazon Braket, and this week it showed it offers an attractive career path even for executives of those firms. In an announcement that revealed ARM CFO Inder singh as a new member of IonQ’s board of directors, IonQ seemed to bury the real news–that it hired two executives away from Google and Amazon, respectively, within the last month or so.

Ariel Braunstein is now Senior Vice President of Product Management at IonQ, but the College Park, Maryland company apparently hired him directly away from Google, where he led  Google’s AR and VR product management group. He also co-founded Pure Digital Technology the firm behind the Flip video camcorder craze years ago, and led Cisco’s consumer product portfolio after Cisco acquired that company.

Also, IonQ now employs Dean Kassmann as Vice President of Research and Development, having lifted Dean from his stint as Senior Director of Advanced Technology for Amazon’s Blue Origin, where he established and led the team responsible for company-wide applied research in the support of Blue Origin’s launch vehicle engines for in-space product lines. These hirings show IonQ is doing something right, and that high-level executives from adjacent technology segments are starting to see quantum computing as a worthwhile pursuit…

…Speaking of Google, researchers there recently published a paper about a concerning issue–the potential for radiation from cosmic rays to disrupt error correction processes and cause them to fail (via Ars Technica.) This is not good news coming at a time when many companies in the sector are devoting time and resources to advancing error correction methods. Lack of viable error correction could keep quantum computers from realizing their fullest potential…

…McKinsey & Co. has a new report on quantum computing use cases, but one of the main things you might draw from the introduction is that China and the European Union are way ahead of the U.S. when it comes to public funding for quantum computing…

…Multiverse Computing, the San Sebastian, Spain company which has been focusing on applying quantum to a range of financial sector use cases, has received a $12.5M€ from the European Commission Innovation Council. The council previously has backed other quantum start-ups such as France-based Pasqal…

…And Pasqal, by the way, got together this week with fellow French firm Thales, as well as French government research agency GENCI and the Paris Region Authority for an effort to explore how Pasqal’s quantum processors could be used to optimize critical applications like logistics, traffic control, industrial automation and more…

…Finally, a tardigrade–you know, the microscopic animal that looks like some kind of soul-sucking larva with claws–was submitted to a quantum entanglement experiment that could tell us more about what happens to living things placed in quantum states, according to New Scientist

Quantum Update will take the next two weeks off, but continue to watch Fierce Electronics for breaking quantum-related news, and look for Quantum Update to return again on Friday afternoons in 2022.