QUANTUM SUMMER VACATION
(Quantum) Winter is Not Coming ⚔️ …
..but it needs understanding, trust and transparency. Excited to help build and sustain a quantum computing economy across companies, institutions and geographies.
Scale Quantum, Not Bureaucracy
I serve as the Chair Pro Tem for the United States National Committee Technical Advisory Group (USNC TAG) to ISO/IEC JTC-3 Quantum Technologies, representing the United States consensus on international quantum standards.
Our mantra: scale quantum, not bureaucracy.
A Stable, Cost-Effective Supply Chain Raises All Boat
In addition to being great at mixing metaphors, I serve on the Technical Advisory Committee (TACs) for Standards and Performance Metrics and Use Cases with the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C).
Hi.
Quantum Al Pastor: What Makes a Quantum Computer?
In celebration of World Quantum Day, here’s a repost of my article from LinkedIn.
The Los Altos Taqueria is busy on most nights, its yellow sign and colorful interior casting bright lights onto the energetic queues that form and gather around meal times.
Located on the outskirts of Mountain View, California, this cozy strip-mall spot is a place where off-shift construction workers mix with Doordash drivers, students, and nearby tech workers, communicating over the percussive sounds of receipts getting stapled onto paper bags and the clangs of spatulas on hot grills. A pair of heat lamps perch on the countertop, warming stacked towers of red plastic baskets filled with tortilla chips. Behind all the noise is a steady stream of regular customers and hard working familiar faces.
I was sitting at one of the yellow formica tables inside the restaurant, pondering one particular feat of physics in front of me: sopes al pastor, a cornmeal disc the size of a hockey puck piled precariously high with lettuce, cheese and steaming Mexican barbequed pork. (Okay let’s be honest: I ordered two of them.)
Through a busy day of meetings, I had somehow missed lunch and was craving some comfort food for dinner before my drive home. The recipes and processes on how to make sopes al pastor are numerous, some more contemporary, others strictly traditional. But most everyone agrees on the fundamental components: perfectly seasoned protein and that solid, sturdy cornmeal base.
While the field of quantum mechanics emerged over a century ago and the concept of a quantum computer is itself more than four decades old, only recently has the transition towards a realizable quantum computer taken serious form, journeying from the realm of research projects and doctoral theses, to scalable commercial possibilities already making an early stage impact on the world around us.
So what are the requirements for something to be called a quantum computer?
In 2000, while working as a researcher at IBM, the physicist David P. DiVincenzo proposed a list of qualities that should be met in order for a functioning quantum computer to exist.
Today there are multiple flavors, or "modalities," of quantum computers being pursued in government labs, tech startups, and large multinational corporations. Some require temperatures colder than deep space in order to operate accurately, some capture tiny particles and magically suspend them in near-nothingness while probing them with laser pulses. Others are based on theoretical particles so conceptually mind-bending that it might stop you in mid-chew of your sopes if you thought about them.
But as different as these modalities may physically look from one another, they should have some common characteristics, according to DiVincenzo.
Seven of them, in fact.
These “DiVincenzo Criteria” are commonly accepted characteristics that need to be considered in order to make a quantum computer real:
1. A scalable physical system with well characterized qubits
2. The ability to initialize the state of the qubits to a simple fiducial state
3. Long relevant decoherence times, much longer than the gate operation time
4. A "universal" set of quantum gates
5. A qubit-specific measurement capability
6. The ability to interconvert stationary and flying qubits
7. The ability faithfully to transmit flying qubits between distant locations
Wait a minute, fiducial state?
Decoherence times?
What do you mean by “qubit” and why are they flying?
Some of the terminology described requires a bit more exploration under the hood of quantum computing to fully appreciate, but it pretty much comes down to this: to make quantum computers a reality, we need the ability to effectively create and manipulate a slew of quantum bits, or “qubits,” for computational use within an extremely short time frame before the information contained gets scrambled by the natural world around us.
We’re now at a stage where it’s important to balance optimistic enthusiasm with the real life challenges of standardization, the pace of technological advancement, supply chain maturity, and the capital and operational expense associated with making all this happen.
But the potential is real.
Quantum computing is so much more than just doing things faster. It’s tackling problems that are practically unsolvable in classical computing: that is, computing as defined by everything we call “computing” today.
Working and partnering across countries, industries and institutions, we have a chance today to collaboratively seek a common and constructive understanding.
Sprinkling in the wonder of a newly emerging field with the implications for societal benefit and job creation that extend anywhere from chemistry, energy, and financial services to healthcare and cybersecurity, we will truly have a collective ambition for discovery, innovation and advancement that will be hard to satiate.
And no single entity or branch of expertise will be able to do this alone.
There’s a long dinner table waiting with plenty of seats.
Show up early and come hungry.
Striking a pose in the sweatshirt I had printed up, adopting the phrasing of the DiVincenzo Criteria used in the courses taught by Will Oliver, Isaac Chuang and their esteemed colleagues in the MIT xPro Quantum Computing program.
