AWS offers design tool; Google reduces error rates

Today’s news from the frontier of quantum computing includes Amazon Web Services’ release of cloud-based simulation software for modeling the electromagnetic properties of quantum hardware, Google’s latest technological advance aimed at lowering the error rate of quantum calculations, and new recommendations about the public sector’s role on the frontier.

Amazon opens a ‘Palace’ for designers

Amazon Web Services is introducing an open-source software platform called Palace (which stands for Parallel, Large-Scale Computational Electromagnetics) that can perform 3-D simulations of complex electromagnetic models and enable the design of quantum computing hardware. The code is available via GitHub and can be used in conjunction with AWS ParallelCluster.

AWS has been using Palace internally for its own quantum hardware development effort. The software tool simulates the electromagnetic characteristics of circuitry — particularly the type of superconducting circuitry used in quantum devices. Tweaking the model can show hardware developers how to optimize their designs for reliability and efficiency.

In their blog post, AWS researchers discuss using Palace to simulate a single transmon qubit coupled to a readout resonator, or a superconducting metamaterial waveguide based on a chain of microwave resonators. Although Palace puts quantum computing at center stage, the tool can also be used for optimizing classical electromagnetic devices.

Google gets better at error correction

One of the big hurdles for quantum computers is error correction: It’s one thing to build quantum bits, or qubits, but it’s quite another to make sure the fuzzy process of computation results in definitive and dependable results. Microsoft has said somewhere around 1,000 qubits might need to be connected to produce one reliable “logical qubit.”

In a research paper published today in the journal Nature, Google researchers say they’ve developed quantum error-correction procedures that can use 17 qubits to recover from one error, or 49 qubits to recover from two simultaneous errors.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, says in a blog post that the achievement is “another big step forward,” following up on Google’s claim of “quantum supremacy” in 2019. But bringing the error rate down to an acceptable level will require making even more giant leaps. “It came down by a little; we need it to come down a lot,” Nature quoted Hartmut Neven, who heads Google’s Quantum Artificial Intelligence lab, as saying.

How to prime the quantum pump

In a newly published report, business consultants at Deloitte say that quantum information systems are “poised to have transformational impacts … but we cannot predict exactly how.” So what can the public sector do to support or accelerate the rise of quantum computing?

The report notes that federal investment in quantum made up less than 9% of the total market for quantum information technology in 2022, and that it’s likely to take up a smaller share of the market five years from now, when it estimates that the market will rise to $44 billion.

According to the report, the best public-sector strategies would include supporting education and training relating to quantum technologies, serving as a guaranteed purchaser of quantum computers to be placed at research universities, and laying the groundwork for industry standards as well as for post-quantum encryption.

“Public sector leaders can help identify and reduce the risks standing in the way of a quantum-enabled future, even as the specifics of that future change over time,” Deloitte’s consultants say.