Quantum computing has long been regarded as a field that generates improbable futuristic scenarios, but today it has become a veritable fertile ground for development that could soon serve Quebec companies with the entry into operation of the Bromont quantum supercomputer IBM, a machine that exists in only five countries of the world.
Quantum computing, born from the intersection of computer science and quantum physics, is a research field that has been progressing for more than 70 years and which arouses as much fascination as it is not easily disclosed.
In the novel prisoners of time by best-selling writer Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park), published in 1999, quantum computing allows a megalomaniacal researcher to build a computer powerful enough to allow the transmission of thousands of data that characterize human beings.
We are witnessing the creation of a time machine that transports a specialist from the Middle Ages into the middle of the Hundred Years War and who obviously gets lost in…
In the novel Origin written at the same time by Dan Brown, another best-selling author who notably wrote Da Vinci Codea young futurist arrives with the help of a quantum supercomputer and artificial intelligence to answer everyone’s two big existential questions: where did we come from and where are we going?
If quantum computing has opened up a world of infinite potential in the realm of science fiction, its advanced computing capabilities – far superior to those of classical digital computing – are increasingly essential in multiple fields of science, research and business. .
In its desire to bring Quebec companies to achieve and accelerate their digital transformation, the Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Energy, in collaboration with the University of Sherbrooke, has established the Digital Innovation Platform and quantum sciences of Quebec (PINQ2) in Sherbrooke.
Announced with great fanfare three years ago, PINQ2 IBM’s quantum supercomputer, Quantum System One, is in operation today and it is this platform that will operate from September, for which the government has acquired the user rights for the next five years at a cost of 68 million.
The quantum supercomputer will be installed in the coming months at the IBM semiconductor plant in Bromont, but the management of the supermachine will be entrusted to PINQ2 through cloud computing.
The innovation platform also works in partnership with the University of Sherbrooke’s Quantum Institute, the University of Montreal and Concordia.
“We offer a hybrid environment with classical and quantum computing. We have already launched projects using IBM’s quantum computers in New York, but from September we will do so with the Bromont supercomputer, which will guarantee the sovereignty of our data”, explained Éric Capelle, general manager of PINQ.2this week at the launch of this next phase.
Develop algorithms
No, the Bromont quantum supercomputer won’t solve the riddle of the origin of the world. However, it will open possibilities for companies and researchers who will use its unrivaled computing power to develop algorithms that conventional computing cannot achieve.
“To simulate the properties of an insulin molecule with a conventional computer would require a machine the size of a country or even the Earth. A quantum computer offers immense computational possibilities to develop much more complex algorithms. We have gone from analog to digital and now quantum is taking us elsewhere,” explains Jean-François Barsoum, Executive Director of Innovation at IBM.
The Bromont quantum supercomputer will be used to optimize operational research and develop, in particular, new materials, new drugs, solutions for the energy, environmental and manufacturing sectors, as well as risk management algorithms for the financial world.
It is expected that around twenty companies will use its potential in the first year and a hundred projects could be added each year thereafter.
“We want to be close to universities and large organizations such as Mila or IVADO, as well as SMEs through university technology transfer centres. We already have start-ups like LeddarTech participating in projects,” says Éric Capelle, from PINQ.2.
IBM uses about twenty of its quantum supercomputers in its New York research center and only four states in the world have or will soon have a Quantum System One, Germany, Japan, South Korea and soon Quebec.
The good thing is that each new version of the quantum supercomputer is more efficient than the previous one. Bromont’s has additional artificial intelligence capabilities that will benefit our field researchers.
Jean-François Barsoum, executive director for innovation at IBM
The federal government this week announced a $40 million investment to enable Toronto-based Xanadu Quantum Technologies to build a $180 million photonics-based quantum computer.
According to the National Research Council of Canada, Canada’s quantum industry is expected to generate $140 billion in annual economic activity by 2045. So expect Bromont’s first new quantum computer to go small in the next few years, that’s where the world of infinitely small and the inordinately large is going.
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