Today, Intel unveiled research breakthroughs fueling its innovation pipeline for keeping Moore's Law on track to a trillion transistors on a package in the next decade. At IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) 2022, Intel researchers showcased advancements in 3D packaging technology with a new 10x improvement in density; novel materials for 2D transistor scaling beyond RibbonFET, including super-thin material just 3 atoms thick; new possibilities in energy efficiency and memory for higher-performing computing; and advancements for quantum computing.

"Seventy-five years since the invention of the transistor, innovation driving Moore's Law continues to address the world's exponentially increasing demand for computing. At IEDM 2022, Intel is showcasing both the forward-thinking and concrete research advancements needed to break through current and future barriers, deliver to this insatiable demand, and keep Moore's Law alive and well for years to come." -Gary Patton, Intel vice president and general manager of Components Research and Design Enablement

On Day 2 of Intel Innovation, Intel illustrated how its efforts and investments to foster an open ecosystem catalyze community innovation, from silicon to systems to apps and across all levels of the software stack. Through an expanding array of platforms, tools and solutions, Intel is focused on helping developers become more productive and more capable of realizing their potential for positive social good. The company introduced new tools to support developers in artificial intelligence, security and quantum computing, and announced the first customers of its new Project Amber attestation service.

"We are making good on our software-first strategy by empowering an open ecosystem that will enable us to collectively and continuously innovate," said Intel Chief Technology Officer Greg Lavender. "We are committed members of the developer community and our breadth and depth of hardware and software assets facilitate the scaling of opportunities for all through co-innovation and collaboration."

Baidu, Inc., a leading AI company with strong Internet foundation, today announced its first superconducting quantum computer that fully integrates hardware, software, and applications. On top of this, Baidu also introduced the world's first all-platform quantum hardware-software integration solution that provides access to various quantum chips via mobile app, PC, and cloud. Launched at Quantum Create 2022, a quantum developer conference held in Beijing, this new offering paves the way for the long-awaited industrialization of quantum computing.

A revolutionary technology that harnesses the laws of quantum mechanics to solve problems beyond the reach of classical computers, quantum computing is expected to bring ground-breaking transformations in fields like artificial intelligence (AI), computational biology, material simulation, and financial technology. However, a significant gap remains between quantum devices and services.

In President Biden's first year in office, the Biden-Harris Administration has implemented an industrial strategy to revitalize domestic manufacturing, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen American supply chains, and accelerate the industries of the future. These policies have spurred an historic recovery in manufacturing, adding 642,000 manufacturing jobs since 2021. Companies are investing in America again, bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs back home. The construction of new manufacturing facilities has increased 116 percent over last year.

Today, President Biden will sign into law the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which will build on this progress, making historic investments that will poise U.S. workers, communities, and businesses to win the race for the 21st century. It will strengthen American manufacturing, supply chains, and national security, and invest in research and development, science and technology, and the workforce of the future to keep the United States the leader in the industries of tomorrow, including nanotechnology, clean energy, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. The CHIPs and Science Act makes the smart investments so that American to compete in and win the future.

JUPITER, the first European exascale supercomputer, will be hosted by the Jülich Supercomputing Centre in Germany. Exascale supercomputers are systems capable of performing more than a billion billion calculations per second and represent a significant milestone for Europe. By supporting the development of high-precision models of complex systems, they will have a major impact on European scientific excellence.

IonQ, an industry leader in quantum computing, announced IonQ Forte, its latest generation of quantum systems. The system features novel, cutting-edge optics technology that enables increased accuracy and further enhances IonQ's industry leading system performance. Forte is expected to be initially available for select developers, partners, and researchers in 2022 and is expected to be available for broader customer access in 2023. Forte is the latest evolution towards a "software-configurable quantum computer," which is designed to allow the company to optimize the computing hardware for targeted user problems-ultimately, giving users customized algorithmic performance. The new system features acousto-optic deflector (AOD) technology, which allows IonQ to dynamically direct laser beams that drive quantum gates towards individual ions. The AOD is designed to minimize noise and overcome variations in ion position, improving fidelity in long chains of trapped ions, which is crucial for scaling quantum computers. In addition, key parameters, including qubit and gate configuration, can be tailored to user needs, creating a truly dynamic and flexible system.

Forte joins IonQ Aria as the company's second system with capacity of up to 32 qubits, has AOD systems capable of addressing up to 40 individual ion qubits, and is currently configured to use 31 of them. With this technological leap, IonQ furthers its commitment to building ever more powerful quantum computers with an increasing number of algorithmic qubits, an application-oriented performance metric for quantum computers. The new announcement follows IonQ's announcement of open-source access to native gates, which allows quantum application developers to explore software breakthroughs on top of IonQ hardware without having to choose from a set menu of gates.

Fujitsu today announced the launch of its new service portfolio "Fujitsu Computing as a Service (CaaS)" to accelerate digital transformation (DX) and empower customers globally by offering access to some of the world's most advanced computing technologies via the cloud for commercial use. The new service encompasses advanced computing resources like Fujitsu's quantum-inspired Digital Annealer technology, the computing technology at the heart of the world's fastest supercomputer, Fugaku, and software applications that allow a wide range of users to solve problems with AI and machine learning. Fujitsu will begin delivery of these new services to the Japanese market starting in October 2022 with a global rollout to international regions including Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Americas to follow.

As the first step, Fujitsu will begin preorders for "Fujitsu Cloud Service HPC," which offers the computing power of the "Fujitsu Supercomputer PRIMEHPC FX1000," which shares the same CPU at the heart of the supercomputer Fugaku. Fujitsu will begin sales of the service for the general public and organizations in Japan starting April 6, 2022, with delivery to commence from October. In the months ahead, Fujitsu will further add services for its Digital Annealer technology and AI cloud services to its service lineup in order to provide further value-added services that seamlessly integrate various solutions.

IBM today unveiled IBM z16, IBM's next-generation system with an integrated on-chip AI accelerator—delivering latency-optimized inferencing. This innovation is designed to enable clients to analyze real-time transactions, at scale -- for mission-critical workloads such as credit card, healthcare and financial transactions. Building on IBM's history of security leadership, IBM z16 also is specifically designed to help protect against near-future threats that might be used to crack today's encryption technologies.

IBM innovations, including the IBM z16, have formed the technology backbone of the global economy for decades. Today's modern IBM mainframe is central to hybrid cloud environments, valued by two thirds of the Fortune 100, 45 of the world's top 50 banks, 8 of the top 10 insurers, 7 of the top 10 global retailers and 8 out of the top 10 telcos as a highly secured platform for running their most mission critical workloads. For example, according to a recent IBM commissioned study by Celent "Operationalizing Fraud Prevention on IBM Z," IBM zSystems run 70% of global transactions, on a value basis. "IBM is the gold standard for highly secured transaction processing. Now with IBM z16 innovations, our clients can increase decision velocity with inferencing right where their mission critical data lives," said Ric Lewis, SVP, IBM Systems. "This opens up tremendous opportunities to change the game in their respective industries so they will be positioned to deliver better customer experiences and more powerful business outcomes.

Fujitsu has successfully developed the world's fastest quantum computer simulator capable of handling 36 qubit quantum circuits on a cluster system featuring Fujitsu's "FUJITSU Supercomputer PRIMEHPC FX 700" ("PRIMEHPC FX 700")(1), which is equipped with the same A64FX CPU that powers the world's fastest supercomputer, Fugaku.

The newly developed quantum simulator can execute the quantum simulator software "Qulacs"(3) in parallel at high speed, achieving approximately double the performance of other significant quantum simulators in 36 qubit quantum operations. Fujitsu's new quantum simulator will serve as an important bridge towards the development of quantum computing applications that are expected to be put to practical use in the years ahead.

IonQ, a leader in quantum computing, today announced that it had signed an agreement with Microsoft to bring IonQ Aria to the Azure Quantum platform. The partnership will add IonQ Aria, the company's latest quantum system, to the cloud platform which already features IonQ's prior generation of systems among the lineup of available hardware. IonQ Aria is IonQ's most advanced commercially available quantum computer. Featuring 20 Algorithmic Qubits (#AQ), it is also the industry's most powerful quantum computer based on standard application-oriented industry benchmarks. Through this partnership, anyone with an internet connection will be able to harness IonQ Aria's abilities, furthering the democratization of quantum computing.

"We're excited to bring IonQ Aria's leading capabilities to more customers through Microsoft Azure and our Expanded Beta program," said IonQ President and CEO Peter Chapman. "We believe the future of quantum computing relies on getting the power of today's systems into the hands of as many people as possible, and building on our existing partnership with Microsoft is an important step along that path."

This morning, Maybell Quantum unveiled the Icebox, a cryogenic platform to power the next generation of quantum computers. Maybell's Icebox solves several pressing challenges for scaling quantum. Quantum computing is a reinvention of computing. It will perform calculations in seconds that would require billions of years for today's most powerful supercomputers, with profound implications for everything from logistics and agriculture to medicine and climate change. But achieving reliable quantum computation requires qubits - quantum computers' fundamental building block - be in a state where they can be finely manipulated and communicated with through minute signals. Maybell's approach to these challenges has attracted contracts from DARPA, NSIC/DIU, and leading research universities, and is now available to the quantum computing industry.

"Controlling quantum devices at room-temperature is like playing a sonata in a hurricane," explains Corban Tillemann-Dick, Maybell's CEO. "Cooling devices to a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero, nature's 'speed limit for cold,' calms this chaos to near 'quantum silence' so quantum operations are controllable." Traditional quantum cryogenic systems, however, are tangles of tubes and wires that cover hundreds of square feet and often require months to set up and PhDs to operate. Moreover, to increase capacity, these systems typically become even larger and more complex.

IBM today announced that LG Electronics has joined the IBM Quantum Network to advance the industry applications of quantum computing. By joining the IBM Quantum Network, IBM will provide LG Electronics access to IBM's quantum computing systems, as well as to IBM's quantum expertise and Qiskit, IBM's open-source quantum information software development kit.

LG Electronics aims to explore applications of quantum computing in industry to support big data, artificial intelligence, connected cars, digital transformation, IoT, and robotics applications - all of which require processing a large amount of data. With IBM Quantum, LG can leverage quantum computing hardware and software advances and applications as they emerge, in accordance with IBM's quantum roadmap. By leveraging IBM Quantum technology, LG will provide workforce training to its employees, permitting LG to investigate how potential breakthroughs can be applied to its industry.

In its relentless pursuit of Moore's Law, Intel is unveiling key packaging, transistor and quantum physics breakthroughs fundamental to advancing and accelerating computing well into the next decade. At IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) 2021, Intel outlined its path toward more than 10x interconnect density improvement in packaging with hybrid bonding, 30% to 50% area improvement in transistor scaling, major breakthroughs in new power and memory technologies, and new concepts in physics that may one day revolutionize computing.

"At Intel, the research and innovation necessary for advancing Moore's Law never stops. Our Components Research Group is sharing key research breakthroughs at IEDM 2021 in bringing revolutionary process and packaging technologies to meet the insatiable demand for powerful computing that our industry and society depend on. This is the result of our best scientists' and engineers' tireless work. They continue to be at the forefront of innovations for continuing Moore's Law," said Robert Chau, Intel Senior Fellow and general manager of Components Research.

The two leading companies in the quantum computing industry have combined to create Quantinuum, thereby accelerating the development of quantum computing and innovation of quantum technologies in a platform agnostic manner to deliver real-world quantum-enabled solutions for some of the most intractable problems that classical computers have not been able to solve.

Cambridge Quantum, the pioneer in quantum software, operating systems, and cybersecurity, and Honeywell Quantum Solutions, which has built the highest-performing quantum hardware, based on trapped-ion technologies, today announced they have satisfied all of the conditions required to close the business combination and formed the new company, now called Quantinuum.

IBM today announced its new 127-quantum bit (qubit) 'Eagle' processor at the IBM Quantum Summit 2021, its annual event to showcase milestones in quantum hardware, software, and the growth of the quantum ecosystem. The 'Eagle' processor is a breakthrough in tapping into the massive computing potential of devices based on quantum physics. It heralds the point in hardware development where quantum circuits cannot be reliably simulated exactly on a classical computer. IBM also previewed plans for IBM Quantum System Two, the next generation of quantum systems.

Quantum computing taps into the fundamental quantum nature of matter at subatomic levels to offer the possibility of vastly increased computing power. The fundamental computational unit of quantum computing is the quantum circuit, an arrangement of qubits into quantum gates and measurements. The more qubits a quantum processor possesses, the more complex and valuable the quantum circuits that it can run.

Today, Intel and QuTech—a collaboration between Delft University of Technology and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research - published key findings in quantum research to address the "interconnect bottleneck" that exists between quantum chips that sit in cryogenic dilution refrigerators and the complex room-temperature electronics that control the qubits. The innovations were covered in Nature, the industry-leading science journal of peer-reviewed research, and mark an important milestone in addressing one of the biggest challenges to quantum scalability with Intel's cryogenic controller chip Horse Ridge.

"Our research results, driven in partnership with QuTech, quantitatively prove that our cryogenic controller, Horse Ridge, can achieve the same high-fidelity results as room-temperature electronics while controlling multiple silicon qubits. We also successfully demonstrated frequency multiplexing on two qubits using a single cable, which clears the way for simplifying the "wiring challenge" in quantum computing. Together, these innovations pave the way for fully integrating quantum control chips with the quantum processor in the future, lifting a major roadblock in quantum scaling," said Stefano Pellerano, principal engineer at Intel Labs.

At an Intel Labs virtual event today, Intel unveiled Horse Ridge II, its second-generation cryogenic control chip, marking another milestone in the company's progress toward overcoming scalability, one of quantum computing's biggest hurdles. Building on innovations in the first-generation Horse Ridge controller introduced in 2019, Horse Ridge II supports enhanced capabilities and higher levels of integration for elegant control of the quantum system. New features include the ability to manipulate and read qubit states and control the potential of several gates required to entangle multiple qubits.

"With Horse Ridge II, Intel continues to lead innovation in the field of quantum cryogenic controls, drawing from our deep interdisciplinary expertise bench across the Integrated Circuit design, Labs and Technology Development teams. We believe that increasing the number of qubits without addressing the resulting wiring complexities is akin to owning a sports car, but constantly being stuck in traffic. Horse Ridge II further streamlines quantum circuit controls, and we expect this progress to deliver increased fidelity and decreased power output, bringing us one step closer toward the development of a 'traffic-free' integrated quantum circuit."-Jim Clarke, Intel director of Quantum Hardware, Components Research Group, Intel.

Intel today announced that it is among the leading U.S. quantum technology companies included in Q-NEXT, one of five new national quantum research centers established by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Q-NEXT, National Quantum Information Science Research Center, is led by Argonne National Laboratory and brings together world-class researchers from national laboratories, universities and leading technology companies to ensure U.S. scientific and economic leadership in this advancing field. The collaboration will enable Intel to actively contribute to the industry's efforts on quantum computing.

"Advancing quantum practicality will be a team sport across the ecosystem, and our partnership with Argonne National Laboratory on Q-NEXT will enable us to bring our unique areas of expertise to this cross-industry effort to drive meaningful progress in the field. At Intel, we are taking a broad view of quantum research that spans hardware and software with a singular focus on getting quantum out of labs and into the real world, where it can solve real problems," said James Clarke, director of Quantum Hardware at Intel.

Today, IBM has unveiled a new milestone on its quantum computing road map, achieving the company's highest Quantum Volume to date. Combining a series of new software and hardware techniques to improve overall performance, IBM has upgraded one of its newest 27-qubit client-deployed systems to achieve a Quantum Volume 64. The company has made a total of 28 quantum computers available over the last four years through IBM Quantum Experience.

In order to achieve a Quantum Advantage, the point where certain information processing tasks can be performed more efficiently or cost effectively on a quantum computer, versus a classical one, it will require improved quantum circuits, the building blocks of quantum applications. Quantum Volume measures the length and complexity of circuits - the higher the Quantum Volume, the higher the potential for exploring solutions to real world problems across industry, government, and research.

To achieve this milestone, the company focused on a new set of techniques and improvements that used knowledge of the hardware to optimally run the Quantum Volume circuits. These hardware-aware methods are extensible and will improve any quantum circuit run on any IBM Quantum system, resulting in improvements to the experiments and applications which users can explore. These techniques will be available in upcoming releases and improvements to the IBM Cloud software services and the cross-platform open source software development kit (SDK) Qiskit.

Honeywell, a multinational conglomerate specializing in the quantum computing field, today announced they have created the world's most advanced quantum computer. Their new solution brings about a quantum computing volume set at 64 - twice the quantum volume of the world's previous most powerful quantum computer, the IBM Raleigh. You might be looking at that 64 quantum volume, wondering what that means - and where did the qubits metric go. Well, the thing with quantum computers is that the number of qubits can't really be looked at as a definite measure of performance - instead, it's just a part of the "quantum volume" calculation, which expresses the final performance of a quantum system.

When you make operations at the quantum level, a myriad of factors come into play that adversely impact performance besides the absolute number of qubits, such as the calculation error rate (ie, how often the system outputs an erroneous answer to a given problem) as well as the qubit connectivity level. Qubit connectivity expresses a relationship between the quantum hardware capabilities of a given machine and the ability of the system to distribute workloads across qubits - sometimes the workloads can only be distributed to two adjacent qubits, other times, it can be distributed to qubits that are more far apart within the system without losing data coherency and without affecting error rates - thus increasing performance and the systems' flexibility towards processing workloads. If you've seen Alex Garland's Devs series on Hulu (and you should; it's great), you can see a would-be-quantum computer and all its intricate connections. Quantum computers really are magnificent crossovers of science, materials engineering, and computing. Of course, the quantum computing arms race means that Honeywell's system will likely be dethroned by quantum volume rather soon.

NEC Corporation, a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies, and D-Wave Systems Inc., the leader in quantum computing systems, software and services, today announced that they have begun joint activities to combine the compute power of NEC's systems with the quantum computing power of D-Wave's systems, software and cloud service to bring those combined capabilities to customers in Japan. NEC has made a US$10 million investment in D-Wave in connection with this initiative.

The two companies will work together on the development of hybrid quantum/classical technologies and services that combine the best features of classical computers and quantum computers; the development of new hybrid applications that make use of those services; and joint marketing and sales go-to-market activities to promote quantum computing.

Today the Hot Chips program committee officially announced the August conference line-up, posted to hotchips.org. For this first-ever live-streamed Hot Chips Symposium, the program is better than ever!

In a session on deep learning training for data centers, we have a mix of talks from the internet giant Google showcasing their TPUv2 and TPUv3, and a talk from startup Cerebras on their 2nd gen wafer-scale AI solution, as well as ETH Zurich's 4096-core RISC-V based AI chip. And in deep learning inference, we have talks from several of China's biggest AI infrastructure companies: Baidu, Alibaba, and SenseTime. We also have some new startups that will showcase their interesting solutions—LightMatter talking about its optical computing solution, and TensTorrent giving a first-look at its new architecture for AI.

Intel, in collaboration with QuTech, today published a paper in Nature demonstrating the successful control of "hot" qubits, the fundamental unit of quantum computing, at temperatures greater than 1 kelvin. The research also highlighted individual coherent control of two qubits with single-qubit fidelities of up to 99.3%. These breakthroughs highlight the potential for cryogenic controls of a future quantum system and silicon spin qubits, which closely resemble a single electron transistor, to come together in an integrated package.

"This research represents a meaningful advancement in our research into silicon spin qubits, which we believe are promising candidates for powering commercial-scale quantum systems, given their resemblance to transistors that Intel has been manufacturing for more than 50 years. Our demonstration of hot qubits that can operate at higher temperatures while maintaining high fidelity paves the way to allow a variety of local qubit control options without impacting qubit performance," said Jim Clarke, director of quantum hardware, Intel Labs.

Intel Labs, in collaboration with QuTech ‑ a partnership between TU Delft and TNO (Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research) ‑ outlines key technical features of its new cryogenic quantum control chip "Horse Ridge" in a research paper released at the 2020 International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco. The paper unveils key technical capabilities of Horse Ridge that address fundamental challenges in building a quantum system powerful enough to demonstrate quantum practicality: scalability, flexibility and fidelity.

"Today, quantum researchers work with just a small number of qubits, using smaller, custom-designed systems surrounded by complex control and interconnect mechanisms. Intel's Horse Ridge greatly minimizes this complexity. By systematically working to scale to thousands of qubits required for quantum practicality, we're continuing to make steady progress toward making commercially viable quantum computing a reality in our future," said Jim Clarke, director of quantum hardware, Intel Labs.

AMD's senior VP of AMD's datacentre group Forrest Norrod, at the Rice Oil and Gas HPC conference, said that while graphene does have incredible promise for the world of computing, it likely will take some ten years before such exotic material are actually taken advantage off. As Norrod puts it, silicon still has a pretty straightforward - if increasingly complex - path down to 3 nanometer densities. And according to him, at the rate manufacturers are being able to scale down their production nodes further, the average time between node transitions stands at some four or five years - which makes the jump to 5 nm and then 3 nm look exactly some 10 years from now, where Norrod expects to go through two additional shrinking nodes for the manufacturing process.

Of course, graphene is being hailed as the next best candidate for taking over silicon's place at the heart of our more complex, high-performance electronics, due, in part, to its high conductivity independent of temperature variation and its incredible switching resistance - it has been found to be able to operate at Terahertz switching speeds. It's a 2D material, which means that implementations of it will have to occur in deposited sheets of graphene across some other material.