MICLEDI Microdisplays today announced a first closing of its Series A funding round with participation from imec.xpand, PMV, imec, KBC and SFPIM demonstrating strong support for the company's value proposition and commercial and technological progress achieved in the seed round. Series A follows a significant seed round award and additional non-dilutive funding in the form of grants and other vehicles from VLAIO. This brings the company's total funding to date to nearly $30 million.

"The company's achievements during this seed round have been astounding," said Sean Lord, CEO of MICLEDI. "Our door is open to engagements with some of the world's largest and most innovative electronic product manufacturing companies, most of whom are working on their own internal development projects for augmented reality (AR) displays in such diverse use cases as smart-wearable devices and automotive HUDs. This level of total funding to date is almost unheard of for a four-year-old startup."

In Sept. 2023, Quantum Machines (QM) unveiled OPX1000, our most advanced quantum control system to date - and the industry's leading controller in terms of performance and channel density. OPX1000 is the third generation of QM's processor-based quantum controllers. It enhances its predecessor, OPX+, by expanding analog performance and multiplying channel density to support the control of over 1,000 qubits. However, QM's vision for quantum controllers extends far beyond.

OPX1000 is designed as a platform for orchestrating the control of large-scale QPUs (quantum processing units). It's equipped with 8 frontend modules (FEMs) slots, representing the cutting-edge modular architecture for quantum control. The first low-frequency (LF) module was introduced in September 2023, and today, we're happy to introduce the Microwave (MW) FEM, which delivers additional value to our rapidly expanding customer base.

NVIDIA today announced that Australia's Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre will add the NVIDIA CUDA Quantum platform accelerated by NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchips to its National Supercomputing and Quantum Computing Innovation Hub, furthering its work driving breakthroughs in quantum computing.

Researchers at the Perth-based center will leverage CUDA Quantum - an open-source hybrid quantum computing platform that features powerful simulation tools, and capabilities to program hybrid CPU, GPU and QPU systems - as well as, the NVIDIA cuQuantum software development kit of optimized libraries and tools for accelerating quantum computing workflows. The NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip - which combines the NVIDIA Grace CPU and Hopper GPU architectures - provides extreme performance to run high-fidelity and scalable quantum simulations on accelerators and seamlessly interface with future quantum hardware infrastructure.

Providing a peek at the architecture powering advanced AI factories, NVIDIA released a video that offers the first public look at Eos, its latest data-center-scale supercomputer. An extremely large-scale NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD, Eos is where NVIDIA developers create their AI breakthroughs using accelerated computing infrastructure and fully optimized software. Eos is built with 576 NVIDIA DGX H100 systems, NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking and software, providing a total of 18.4 exaflops of FP8 AI performance. Revealed in November at the Supercomputing 2023 trade show, Eos—named for the Greek goddess said to open the gates of dawn each day—reflects NVIDIA's commitment to advancing AI technology.

Eos Supercomputer Fuels Innovation
Each DGX H100 system is equipped with eight NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs. Eos features a total of 4,608 H100 GPUs. As a result, Eos can handle the largest AI workloads to train large language models, recommender systems, quantum simulations and more. It's a showcase of what NVIDIA's technologies can do, when working at scale. Eos is arriving at the perfect time. People are changing the world with generative AI, from drug discovery to chatbots to autonomous machines and beyond. To achieve these breakthroughs, they need more than AI expertise and development skills. They need an AI factory—a purpose-built AI engine that's always available and can help ramp their capacity to build AI models at scale Eos delivers. Ranked No. 9 in the TOP 500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers, Eos pushes the boundaries of AI technology and infrastructure.

IBM has announced (on January 29) that Korea Quantum Computing (KQC) has engaged IBM to offer IBM's most advanced AI software and infrastructure, as well as quantum computing services. KQC's ecosystem of users will have access to IBM's full stack solution for AI, including watsonx, an AI and data platform to train, tune and deploy advanced AI models and software for enterprises. KQC is also expanding its quantum computing collaboration with IBM. Having operated as an IBM Quantum Innovation Center since 2022, KQC will continue to offer access to IBM's global fleet of utility-scale quantum systems over the cloud. Additionally, IBM and KQC plan to deploy an IBM Quantum System Two on-site at KQC in Busan, South Korea by 2028.

"We are excited to work with KQC to deploy AI and quantum systems to drive innovation across Korean industries. With this engagement, KQC clients will have the ability to train, fine-tune, and deploy advanced AI models, using IBM watsonx and advanced AI infrastructure. Additionally, by having the opportunity to access IBM quantum systems over the cloud, today—and a next-generation quantum system in the coming years—KQC members will be able to combine the power of AI and quantum to develop new applications to address their industries' toughest problems," said Darío Gil, IBM Senior Vice President and Director of Research. This collaboration includes an investment in infrastructure to support the development and deployment of generative AI. Plans for the AI-optimized infrastructure includes advanced GPUs and IBM's Artificial Intelligence Unit (AIU), managed with Red Hat OpenShift to provide a cloud-native environment. Together, the GPU system and AIU combination is being engineered to offer members state-of-the-art hardware to power AI research and business opportunities.

With computation potential far beyond current supercomputers, quantum computers are the subject of enthusiastic research and development worldwide. In 2023, Academia Sinica successfully overcame various bottlenecks in the fabrication, control, and measurement of quantum chips. In October, the creation of a 5-qubit superconducting quantum computer developed in Taiwan marked a significant milestone. Starting this week, it will be made available online to project collaborators.

Dr. Chii Dong Chen, Distinguished Research Fellow at Academia Sinica's Institute of Physics and Research Center for Applied Sciences, noted that this project is part of the quantum technology special project funded by the National Science and Technology Council. Initially scheduled to build a 3-qubit quantum computer by February of 2024, Academia Sinica's research team surpassed the development schedule approved by the National Science and Technology Council and built a 5-qubit system by October of 2023. The fidelity of the quantum bit logic gates reached an impressive 99.9%.

Alice & Bob, a leading hardware developer in the race to fault tolerant quantum computers, today announced the tape out of a new chip expected to improve error rates with every qubit added, making it a prototype for the company's first error-corrected, logical qubit.

The 16-qubit quantum processing unit (QPU), Helium 1, is the first chip in Alice & Bob's roadmap combining cat qubits to run an error correction code. The company will be able to use this platform to create its first logical qubit with error rates lower than any existing single physical qubit. With the tape-out complete, the chip enters a characterization and calibration phase that will be followed by a release on the cloud.

Atom Computing announced it has created a 1,225-site atomic array, currently populated with 1,180 qubits, in its next-generation quantum computing platform. This is the first time a company has crossed the 1,000-qubit threshold for a universal gate-based system, planned for release next year. It marks an industry milestone toward fault-tolerant quantum computers capable of solving large-scale problems.

CEO Rob Hays said rapid scaling is a key benefit of Atom Computing's unique atomic array technology. "This order-of-magnitude leap - from 100 to 1,000-plus qubits within a generation - shows our atomic array systems are quickly gaining ground on more mature qubit modalities," Hays said. "Scaling to large numbers of qubits is critical for fault-tolerant quantum computing, which is why it has been our focus from the beginning. We are working closely with partners to explore near-term applications that can take advantage of these larger scale systems."

A new global study by the IBM Institute for Business Value found that nearly half of CEOs surveyed identify productivity as their highest business priority—up from sixth place in 2022. They recognize technology modernization is key to achieving their productivity goals, ranking it as second highest priority. Yet, CEOs can face key barriers as they race to modernize and adopt new technologies like generative AI.

The annual CEO study, CEO decision-making in the age of AI, Act with intention, found three-quarters of CEO respondents believe that competitive advantage will depend on who has the most advanced generative AI. However, executives are also weighing potential risks or barriers of the technology such as bias, ethics and security. More than half (57%) of CEOs surveyed are concerned about data security and 48% worry about bias or data accuracy.

Today, Intel announced the release of its newest quantum research chip, Tunnel Falls, a 12-qubit silicon chip, and it is making the chip available to the quantum research community. In addition, Intel is collaborating with the Laboratory for Physical Sciences (LPS) at the University of Maryland, College Park's Qubit Collaboratory (LQC), a national-level Quantum Information Sciences (QIS) Research Center, to advance quantum computing research.

"Tunnel Falls is Intel's most advanced silicon spin qubit chip to date and draws upon the company's decades of transistor design and manufacturing expertise. The release of the new chip is the next step in Intel's long-term strategy to build a full-stack commercial quantum computing system. While there are still fundamental questions and challenges that must be solved along the path to a fault-tolerant quantum computer, the academic community can now explore this technology and accelerate research development."—Jim Clarke, director of Quantum Hardware, Intel

Samsung Display today announced it will exhibit a variety of paradigm-shifting, next-generation OLED technologies at the SID Display Week 2023, May 23-25, at the Los Angeles Convention Center in California. At the event, Samsung Display is unveiling Rollable Flex, which aims to revolutionize the portability of tablet PCs or laptops, and Sensor OLED display, which provides new usability by embedding fingerprint and blood pressure sensors in panels without attaching separate modules. With these and other OLED innovations, Samsung is demonstrating its drive to create and lead new market segments.

Now in its 60th year, Display Week by SID (Society for Information Display) is the world's largest professional display event held annually in North America, featuring international exhibits, symposiums and seminars.

RIKEN and Intel Corporation (hereafter referred to as Intel) have signed a memorandum of understanding on collaboration and cooperation to accelerate joint research in next-generation computing fields such as AI (artificial intelligence), high-performance computing, and quantum computers. The signing ceremony was concluded on May 18, 2023. As part of this MOU, RIKEN will work with Intel Foundry Services (IFS) to prototype these new solutions.

Quantinuum is proud and excited to announce this significant step towards fault tolerant quantum computing. This achievement has been uniquely enabled by the release of Quantinuum's System Model H2 - the highest performing quantum computer ever built. The official launch of Quantinuum's H2 quantum processor, Powered by Honeywell, follows extensive pre-launch work with a variety of global partners and was essential to the controlled creation and manipulation of non-Abelian anyons. The precise control of non-Abelian anyons has been long held as the path to using topological qubits for a fault tolerant quantum computer.

Tony Uttley, President and COO of Quantinuum, stated "With our second-generation system, we are entering a new phase of quantum computing. H2 highlights the opportunity to achieve valuable outcomes that are only possible with a quantum computer. The development of the H2 processor is also a critical step in moving towards universal fault tolerant quantum computing." He added "This demonstration is a beautiful proof point in the power of our H-Series hardware roadmap and reinforces our primary purpose which is to enable our customers to tackle problems that were previously beyond the reach of classical computers. The implications for society are significant and we are excited to see how this technology truly changes the world."

EK, the premium liquid cooling gear manufacturer, is expanding the EK-Quantum Surface radiator portfolio. This radiator series has already garnered high praise, won multiple awards at reputable review-based websites, and is now being expanded with Black Editions. The EK-Quantum Surface radiators are built upon years of development and market research to provide the best possible product with mechanically rigid and top-performing finishes. These radiators are EK-Matrix7 compatible, as EK focuses on bringing the Matrix7 standard into all aspects of water cooling and beyond, enabling users to create stunning and professional-looking builds in a much more user-friendly way.

EK-Quantum Surface Radiators Black Edition
The new Black Edition EK-Quantum Surface P radiators come in two sizes - 240 mm and 360 mm. With a thickness of 44 mm, the EK-Quantum P Series Surface radiators are the absolute all-rounders for low noise and high performance across the entire fan operational range.

IBM today unveiled new single frame and rack mount configurations of IBM z16 and IBM LinuxONE 4, expanding their capabilities to a broader range of data center environments. Based on IBM's Telum processor, the new options are designed with sustainability in mind for highly efficient data centers, helping clients adapt to a digitized economy and ongoing global uncertainty.

Introduced in April 2022, the IBM z16 multi frame has helped transform industries with real-time AI inferencing at scale and quantum-safe cryptography. IBM LinuxONE Emperor 4, launched in September 2022, features capabilities that can reduce both energy consumption and data center floor space while delivering the scale, performance and security that clients need. The new single frame and rack mount configurations expand client infrastructure choices and help bring these benefits to data center environments where space, sustainability and standardization are paramount.

NVIDIA today announced a new system built with Quantum Machines that provides a revolutionary new architecture for researchers working in high-performance and low-latency quantum-classical computing. The world's first GPU-accelerated quantum computing system, the NVIDIA DGX Quantum brings together the world's most powerful accelerated computing platform - enabled by the NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip and CUDA Quantum open-source programming model - with the world's most advanced quantum control platform, OPX, by Quantum Machines.

The combination allows researchers to build extraordinarily powerful applications that combine quantum computing with state-of-the-art classical computing, enabling calibration, control, quantum error correction and hybrid algorithms. "Quantum-accelerated supercomputing has the potential to reshape science and industry with capabilities that can serve humanity in enormous ways," said Tim Costa, director of HPC and quantum at NVIDIA. "NVIDIA DGX Quantum will enable researchers to push the boundaries of quantum-classical computing."

Chinese company Origin Quantum announced that it has developed China's first practical 24-qubit quantum computer using superconducting chip technology, named Wuyuan. The computer uses an unspecified number of quantum processing units (QPUs), but comes with a custom operating system, and a cloud-computing platform, allowing Chinese businesses to hire the computer as they would any HPC cloud-computing instance. Origin Quantum said that with the production of Wuyuan, the company is already developing an even more powerful quantum computer, named Wukong. Origin Quantum is one of the many curiously new Chinese high-technology startups that have sprung up and don't feature on Western tech sanctions lists, to which Western companies are forbidden to sale certain high-tech machinery and chips to.Many Thanks to TumbleGeorge for the tip.

IonQ, Inc. (NYSE: IONQ), an industry leader in quantum computing, today announced plans to open the first known dedicated quantum computing manufacturing facility in the U.S., located in the suburbs of Seattle, Washington. The new facility will house IonQ's growing R&D and manufacturing teams, as they develop systems to meet continued customer demand. With public support from U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) - an early proponent of the CHIPS and Science Act - and Congresswoman Suzan DelBene, US representative from Washington's 1st congressional district,today's announcement is part of IonQ's broader intent to invest $1 billion through expansion in the Pacific Northwest over the next 10 years.

"IonQ making the decision to open the first ever quantum computing manufacturing facility in the country right here in Bothell is a very big deal—and it's great news for Washington state," said Senator Murray. "Opening this facility will absolutely help ensure Washington state continues to be a leader in innovation and cutting-edge technologies—but it also means jobs that will be an investment in our families and their futures. These are the kinds of investments that happen when we pass legislation like the CHIPS and Science Act to invest in American manufacturing and build the economy of the future right here at home."

Acer announced two powerful Predator Helios gaming laptops and a pair of Predator gaming monitors. The laptops feature an all-new design with 16-inch and 18-inch display sizes, the latest 13th Gen Intel Core mobile processors and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs, making them Acer's most powerful gaming laptops to date. The Predator X45 showcases a massive 800R curved monitor and has earned a CES Innovation Award in the "Computer Peripherals & Accessories" category. Along with the Predator X27U, both monitors include OLED technology with fast 240 Hz refresh rates.

Predator Helios 16, Predator Helios 18 Laptops
The all-new Predator Helios 16 (PH16-71) and Predator Helios 18 (PH18-71) bring the latest and greatest tech to Acer's most powerful gaming laptop series. Sporting a completely new design and upgraded thermals, they both offer models that include 13th Gen Intel Core i9 or i7 HX processors paired with up to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop GPU (MGP up to 165 W) and a plethora of must-have top-of-the-line gaming features.

IBM is one of the frontiers for using the natural properties of quantum particles to process the information on an enterprise scale. With constant advances in quantum information processing, the company is using newly found discoveries to double the size of its quantum processors. Using quantum properties instead of the conventional on/off switching of bits in the regular processors, quantum processors can process the information on a much larger scale. Last year, IBM unveiled the Eagle quantum processor with 127 qubits. This year, the company is bringing in 433 qubits to the table to power the next generation of enterprise and data center infrastructure.

Called IBM Osprey, it features IBM's 433 qubits cooled to cryogenic temperatures and in a controlled environment. While the computational power of the processor seems to be rather impressive, it is still a noisy quantum implementation that is sensitive to outside noise and requires exceptionally low temperatures to operate, such as -273 Degrees Celcius. To combat some of those obstacles, Osprey adds multi-level wiring to provide flexibility for signal routing and device layout while also adding integrated filtering to reduce noise and improve stability. Concurrently, IBM developed new signal delivery wiring that is 70% cheaper and produces the same result, driving up the ability to commercialize this design. For performance, IBM managed to increase quantum volume four times from 128 to 512 and a 10x improvement in Driving quantum performance from 1.4k to 15k Circuit Layer Operations Per Second (CLOPS).

Researchers at Toshiba Corporation have achieved a breakthrough in quantum computer architecture: the basic design for a double-transmon coupler that will improve the speed and accuracy of quantum computation in tunable couplers. The coupler is a key device in determining the performance of superconducting quantum computers.

Tunable couplers in a superconducting quantum computer link two qubits and perform quantum computations by turning on and off the coupling between them. Current technology can turn off the coupling of transmon qubits with close frequencies, but this is prone to crosstalk errors that occur on one of the qubits when the other qubit is irradiated with electromagnetic waves for control. In addition, current technology cannot completely turn off coupling for qubits with significantly different frequencies, resulting in errors due to residual coupling.

Marvell today unveiled its LiquidSecurity 2 (LS2) hardware security module (HSM) adapter, the industry's most advanced solution for enabling encryption, key management, authentication and other HSM services in the cloud. LS2 is a converged security platform for payment, privacy compliance, and general purpose applications, and is powered by a cloud-optimized Marvell OCTEON data processing unit (DPU), proven at scale across the world's largest hyperscale clouds. The new Marvell HSM adapter offers the industry's highest performing cryptographic acceleration and processing, including hardware-secured storage of up to one million keys for AES, RSA and ECC encryption algorithms, and 45 partitions for robust multi-tenant use cases.

As enterprises migrate from on-premises to private- or multi-cloud environments, the industry-leading Marvell LiquidSecurity platform empowers cloud service providers and large enterprises to create HSM-as-a-service clouds. Marvell's HSM adapters have the latest FIPS-certified security boundary, designed for the most demanding applications deployed at cloud-scale while offering best-in-class cost, performance and energy efficiency for both public and private clouds.

Seoul Viosys ("SVC"), a manufacturer of optical semiconductor devices, will present micro-LED based on the laminated structure - which enables high-resolution display - as well as its micro-LED display products at the IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin) 2022. The stacked micro-LED developed by Seoul Viosys has a unique and innovative structure in which three chips representing red, green, and blue (R/G/B) are vertically arrayed instead of the usual horizontal array. Its main difference from conventional micro-LEDs is that its R/G/B LED in the stacked structure emit colors as if they constitute a single pixel through perfect color mixing.

Micro-LED produced by Seoul Viosys can achieve deep black color and clear image thanks to the stacked structure. Also, as colors combining R/G/B are emitted externally from inside a pixel, viewers can enjoy clear pictures without distortions from any direction.

EK, the Slovenia-based premium PC liquid cooling gear manufacturer, launches its first external screen for PC enthusiasts - EK-Quantum Lumen 7" LCD. This Quantum series 7-inch screen is a stylish and functional addition to any liquid cooling setup. The display is recognized as an additional desktop by your OS, offering a handy way of displaying any content your want or monitoring the computer's vital parameters like component and coolant temperatures, fan RPM, core frequency, and more.

This is a high-quality IPS screen designed to be mounted inside the PC case or to be used as an external monitor for temperature, hardware load, and other information. It has a wide SVGA resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels. Its diagonal is 7 inches long, with the IPS panel type for superior viewing angles and vivid colors. It connects to the PC through HDMI 2.0 cable that is included in the package and an internal Type-A USB 2.0 port. Another USB Type-C cable is also included for using Lumen as an external display.

EK, the leading computer cooling solutions provider, releases the latest generation of its TEC solution - the EK-Quantum Delta² TEC - a CPU water block for extreme cooling. In collaboration with Intel, EK has developed a next-generation water block for enthusiasts seeking consistent peak performance and ultimate overclocking of the unlocked 12th Gen Intel Core desktop processors.

This water block is based on Peltier (ThermoElectricCooler) technology and can transport heat using the Peltier effect. Inside the TEC plate, the Peltier effect produces a temperature difference between the two sides by flowing a current through it. This means the cold plate, which is in contact with the CPU, can be lowered to sub-ambient temperatures while the liquid cooling loop cools the hot side of the TEC.