Latest news with #NordQuantique
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
This tiny quantum computer could blow massive data centers out of the water with speed, power, and pure physics
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Nord Quantique promises quantum power without the bulk or energy drain Traditional HPC may fall if Nord's speed and energy claims prove real Cracking RSA-830 in an hour could transform cybersecurity forever A quantum computing startup has announced plans to develop a utility-scale quantum computer with more than 1,000 logical qubits by 2031. Nord Quantique has set an ambitious target which, if achieved, could signal a seismic shift in high-performance computing (HPC). The company claims its machines are smaller and would offer far greater efficiency in both speed and energy consumption, thereby making traditional HPC systems obsolete. Nord Quantique uses 'multimode encoding' via a technique known as the Tesseract code, and this allows each physical cavity in the system to represent more than one quantum mode, effectively increasing redundancy and resilience without adding complexity or size. 'Multimode encoding allows us to build quantum computers with excellent error correction capabilities, but without the impediment of all those physical qubits,' explained Julien Camirand Lemyre, CEO of Nord Quantique. 'Beyond their smaller and more practical size, our machines will also consume a fraction of the energy, which makes them appealing for instance to HPC centers where energy costs are top of mind.' Nord's machines would occupy a mere 20 square meters, making them highly suitable for data center integration. Compared to 1,000–20,000 m² needed by competing platforms, this portability further strengthens its case. 'These smaller systems are also simpler to develop to utility-scale due to their size and lower requirements for cryogenics and control electronics,' the company added. The implication here is significant: better error correction without scaling physical infrastructure, a central bottleneck in the quantum race. In a technical demonstration, Nord's system exhibited excellent stability over 32 error correction cycles with no measurable decay in quantum information. 'Their approach of encoding logical qubits in multimode Tesseract states is a very effective method of addressing error correction and I am impressed with these results,' said Yvonne Gao, Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore. 'They are an important step forward on the industry's journey toward utility-scale quantum computing.' Such endorsements lend credibility, but independent validation and repeatability remain critical for long-term trust. Nord Quantique claims its system could solve RSA-830, a representative cryptographic challenge, in just one hour using 120 kWh of energy at 1 MHz speed, slashing the energy need by 99%. In contrast, traditional HPC systems would require approximately 280,000 kWh over nine days. Other quantum modalities, such as superconducting, photonic, cold atoms, and ion traps, fall short in either speed or efficiency. For instance, cold atoms might consume only 20 kW, but solving the same problem would take six months. That said, there remains a need for caution. Post-selection - used in Nord's error correction demonstrations, required discarding 12.6% of data per round. While this helped show stability, it introduces questions about real-world consistency. In quantum computing, the leap from laboratory breakthrough to practical deployment can be vast; thus, the claims on energy reduction and system miniaturization, though striking, need independent real-world verification. Upgrading to Windows 11 just got easier - Microsoft introduces a new business backup tool Check out the best 3D modeling software for 3D printing and more We've rounded up the best portable monitors available now
Forbes
30-05-2025
- Health
- Forbes
The Prototype: China Tries To Attract The Researchers America Is Turning Away
In this week's edition of The Prototype, we look at the Trump Administration's move to halt Harvard from enrolling international students, a 4-D approach to quantum computing, a drug combination that could lead to healthy aging and more. You can sign up to get The Prototype in your inbox here. AFP via Getty Images A federal judge has blocked a Trump administration plan to ban Harvard from enrolling international students, which was enacted last week. The move was the latest in a number of actions the Administration has taken–including freezing billions of dollars in research grants–against the nation's oldest university. Harvard has challenged the administration's legal authority to do this in multiple lawsuits. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that he would begin 'aggressively' revoking visas for the nearly 280,000 Chinese students studying across the country. International students as a whole contributed about $44 billion to the U.S. economy last year, and they often play a key role in a college's finances, since they typically pay full tuition. Enacting policies that reduce their number, on top of cuts in grant funding, mean that colleges will have fewer resources to spend on research programs. Universities in Hong Kong are trying to attract the affected international students, offering dedicated scholarships and help finding accommodations. These follow similar moves by China to woo researchers away from the United States in the wake of cuts to research grants and other policy changes. Stay tuned. Nord Quantique One of the biggest challenges of quantum computing is that its fundamental unit, the quantum bit (or 'qubit') is fragile and easily disturbed by the environment, causing errors in computation that require correction. That's a slow process and one reason quantum computers aren't yet practical. Typically, this is managed by building redundancy into these systems so that they have multiple qubits that process the same information. In practice, this means quantum computers are much larger–and more energy intensive–as they scale up. Quebec-based Nord Quantique is taking a different approach. It has developed a qubit with built-in information redundancy, which could herald a quantum computer much smaller than those being built today. CEO Julien Camirand-Lemyre told me that Nord Quantique has done this by using multiple photons–particles of light–to encode information several times over in a single qubit instead of having redundant multiple qubits. This is a much more complicated approach than its competitors' (for one thing, it requires what's effectively four-dimensional geometry) but the benefit is that the computer itself will potentially be smaller and more energy efficient. 'It's really not only a way to do better error correction, but a way to simplify the system at scale from all perspectives,' he said. Nord Quantique has successfully validated the technique in hardware with a single qubit. Its next step, Camirand-Lemyre told me, is to build a 4-qubit chip, which it hopes to have up and running by the end of the year. In a new study published this week, researchers found that a combination of cancer drugs Rapamycin and Trametinib extended the lifespan of mice by about 30%. The combination appeared to significantly reduce chronic inflammation as mice aged, improving their overall health. The scientists behind the study don't think that a similar lifespan extending effect would be seen in humans, but said that clinical trials could be conducted to see if the drugs have any other benefits for elderly people. This week, China launched its Tianwen-2 spacecraft, sending it on a journey to visit an asteroid called 469219 Kamoʻoalewa. When it arrives in July of next year, Tianwen-2 will take samples from the surface and then send them back to Earth for analysis. The spacecraft will then continue its journey through the solar system for a planned rendezvous with a comet called 311P/PANSTARRS in the year 2035. In 2023, I wrote about Radiant, a startup that is building portable nuclear reactors that can fit inside a shipping container. The idea is to use them in remote areas with no available electric grid or to help provide power during disasters. This week, the company announced that it raised $165 million in venture investment. The new capital comes just a few weeks after the company was selected by the Department of Energy to receive nuclear fuel, which it plans to use in the first test of one of its reactors next year. In my other newsletter, InnovationRx, Amy Feldman and I looked at how Hinge Health's successful IPO may be a trendsetter for a new wave of digital health companies going public, Indian billionaire Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw's 'biosimilars' business, changes to Covid vaccine guidance and more. SpaceX launched its ninth test flight of Starship this week and like the two tests before, it failed. After reaching orbit, the spacecraft's fuel tanks leaked, causing it to spin out of control and re-enter the Earth's atmosphere, where it broke up before its planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean. Health tech startup Applied Cognition published a new study demonstrating that its wearable device can continuously track the brain's glymphatic system, which removes toxic proteins. Dysfunctions in this system play a role in diseases like Alzheimer's, but until now monitoring them required an MRI machine. Researchers at Cornell University have developed a new way to deliver mRNA vaccines that potentially makes them more effective while reducing the risk of side effects. Japanese startup ispace is one step closer to landing on the Moon. The company's Resilience lander entered lunar orbit this week, where it will prepare for a scheduled landing on June 6. Do you want to ensure that your new hires grow in their career and perform well? A new study suggests the best way to do that is to trust them with a complex project. Researchers tracked employees at a high-tech company over several years, and found that new employees assigned to more complicated tasks were more engaged and showed higher levels of learning. That translated into better employee evaluations and higher promotion rates. I've been listening to Goodbye Small Head, the latest album by Ezra Furman. There are a lot of tracks to like here, in particular 'Power of the Moon', which has a Velvet Underground vibe; 'Slow Burn', which has the dreamlike quality of a Smashing Pumpkins ballad; and 'A World of Love and Care', which makes fantastic use of strings to drive its rhythms. One of the best things about Furman is that no two of her albums sound alike–they're all distinct creations, and this is one of the best.
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Breakthrough: Quantum computers made 90% more energy efficient, smaller, and faster
Canadian company Nord Quantique has developed a novel method to improve quantum error correction (QEC) that will help develop smaller and energy-efficient quantum computers in the future. Dubbed Tesseract code, the approach combines multimode encoding with bosonic qubit technology, which protects the system from multiple common errors seen in quantum systems. Quantum computers are the next big thing in computing technology, promising to solve challenges like climate change, drug discovery, and much more for humanity. Unlike classical computers that use bits to store and process information, quantum computers leverage quantum states of materials for processing data. Called quantum bits or qubits, these data storage units can occupy multiple states simultaneously, referred to as superposition, unlike binary bits' on or off state. This allows qubits to process information at exponential rates compared to classical bits. However, this also increases the likelihood of accumulating errors during the process, prompting the need to build robust quantum error correction (QEC) systems. Since quantum computing systems operate at ultra-low temperatures, deploying QEC systems is an additional cost associated with quantum computing in terms of money spent and energy consumption. Nord Quantique's innovative approach solves both problems in one. The Tesseract Code uses bosonic qubit technology that protects the quantum system from bit flips, phase flips, and control errors. Since this is coupled with multimode encoding, the QEC prevents leakage errors. According to the company's research paper, Nord uses a completely autonomous error correction system capable of mid-circuit measurements, which can identify and discard flagged realizations during the computation. This is referred to as erasure-based error suppression. "Using physical qubits to create redundancy makes the system large, inefficient, and complex, which also increases energy requirements," said Julien Camirand-Lemyre, CEO of Nord Quantique, in a press release. "Multimode encoding allows us to build quantum computers with excellent error correction capabilities, but without the impediment of all those physical qubits." In a demonstration, the company filtered out imperfect runs and discarded 12.6 percent of data for each round of 32 error correction cycles with no measurable decay. As more modes are added, the Tesseract code is also expected to deliver more QEC benefits. The major advantage of this approach is that it builds not just fault-tolerant but also efficient quantum systems. The company estimates that its 1,000 logical qubit quantum computer will take just 20 square meters of space and easily fit inside a data center. In terms of energy savings, the researchers estimate that the cryptographic algorithm RSA-830 can be computed at speeds of 1 MHz in just one hour on their quantum computer using 120 kWh of energy. In comparison, classical high-performance computing would need nine days of computing time with an estimated energy expenditure of 280,000 kWh, showcasing significant time and energy savings when using quantum computing. Interestingly, Norq Quantifique's approach also ensures that its physical and logical qubits are identical. A 1,000-qubit quantum computer with physical and logical qubits in a 1:1 ratio will arrive in 2029.
Globe and Mail
29-05-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Quebec startup shows progress toward practical quantum computing
Julien Camirand Lemyre wants to correct the errors in his way. To be clear, this is not a quest for personal improvement. It's a technical challenge and, for the nascent quantum computing industry, an extremely important one. Mr. Lemyre is a PhD physicist and chief executive officer of Nord Quantique, a startup based in Sherbrooke, Que. Since 2020, he has set his company's sights on overcoming a key obstacle that stands in the path of commercial quantum computing: the technology's propensity for making mistakes. On Thursday, Nord Quantique announced it had taken an important step on its path toward surmounting that barrier. The company has successfully used one of its own quantum devices to encode a form of error detection for the first time. Bigger players, including Google, Microsoft and Amazon, are working on the same problem as they seek to advance their own quantum systems. What's different about Nord Quantique is that the hardware doing the checking is the same hardware doing the calculating. The experimental result suggests that larger, commercially relevant quantum computers can be constructed from similar components. If so, those computers might occupy only a modest amount of space – something like a standard data centre rather than a football-field size complex that some fear will be required to get other types of quantum systems to run reliably. 'We think there are better ways to quantum error correction,' Mr. Lemyre said. 'This ties in with our philosophy of really working on something that we think is worth scaling up.' The company's announcement, together with an accompanying scientific paper, is the latest step in what has become a industry-wide push to tackle error correction, also called fault tolerance. Fault tolerant quantum computers have yet become a practical reality, but they are an attractive business proposition because they are expected to one day perform various kinds of calculations that are out of reach of conventional digital systems. Potential applications range from data security, to drug discovery to forecasting, among other areas. Yet the same properties that make quantum computers powerful also make it easy for them to fail. Ordinary computers use bits – the electronic components that represent the 1s and 0s of a digital operation. In a quantum system, the bits are replaced with qubits, which are more versatile and more finicky. Thanks to the slippery rules of quantum physics a qubit needn't be a one or a zero, but can be a bit of both. But this ambiguous state of being, so essential for quantum computation, is easily disrupted by outside influences such as vibration or heat. Microsoft creates chip it says shows quantum computers are 'years, not decades' away The standard way of dealing with this is to dedicate other qubits to keep tabs on the first one. But this gets complicated and costly. For every qubit required to perform a calculation, more than 1,000 may be required for error correction. Imagine a Hollywood celebrity with an entourage that would fill an entire hotel and you can see how the problem multiplies as more celebrities join the party. Nord Quantique uses a different kind of qubit than many other systems, involving microwaves in a supercooled cavity. The microwaves consist of individual particles, or photons, that have different ways of bouncing around in the cavity called modes. What Nord Quantique has shown in its latest work is that these modes can be used for a type of error detecting code called Tesseract without the need for additional hardware. Mr. Lemyre said there are ways in which the approach can be further improved, such as by adding more photons to the cavity. And the system would draw only a fraction of the energy needed by other approaches. Yvonne Gao, an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore who is familiar with the company's work, said that the work represents good progress along one possible path toward a fault tolerant quantum computer. She said Nord Quantique has helped the field by adding to the diversity of approaches to error correction, while carving out its own niche. 'It's a very smart choice not going head on with the other people working on other flavours' of the problem, she said. While some larger companies have made huge investments in quantum computing, it is unclear which approach is most likely to succeed. That means smaller startups with novel technologies to explore may ultimately be the ones who find the way forward. Three Canadian companies vying for U.S. quantum computing funding as race to develop technology heats up Daniel Gottesman, a theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland who played a part in developing the codes that Nord Quantique and others are using for error correction, said that it was surprising that no clear winner has yet emerged among the various approaches being tried. One reason for this, he said, is that the difficulty in building and controlling such systems is challenging enough that even the best-resourced companies cannot zoom ahead, but instead must work methodically at improving error rates and increasing the number of qubits in their devices. 'That takes time and gives other people time to do that work as well,' he said. Nord Quantique is not the only Canadian company in the error correction game. Last February, Photonic Inc. of Coquitlam, B.C., publicized its approach to the problem, which builds on an alternative strategy for tying qubits together known as QLDPC (quantum low-density parity check) codes. This class of codes is well suited to Photonic's quantum computing hardware, in which qubits are based on the spins of carbon atoms that reside within silicon chips. Because the chips can be interconnected with light guided by fibre optics, the qubits do not need to be physically adjacent to one another to be linked. This means the task of error correction can be spread out, creating opportunities to harness groups of qubits in more efficient ways. Housed in a non-descript industrial unit east of Vancouver, Photonic has grown its head count to 150 since coming out of stealth mode 18 months ago. The company is now preparing to expand into a larger building next door to facilitate its hardware development. Together with Nord Quantique and Xanadu Quantum Technologies Inc. of Toronto, Photonic is one of the Canadian companies to be selected by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to compete for support in developing quantum computing technologies. Stephanie Simmons, who founded Photonic in 2016 and leads its technology development, said that despite the challenge, the reason for the increasing sense of excitement in the field is clear. 'Every time you commercialize a branch of physics it changes everything,' she said.
