AI reasoning models and agents are set to transform industries, but delivering their full potential at scale requires massive compute and optimized software. The "reasoning" process involves multiple models, generating many additional tokens, and demands infrastructure with a combination of high-speed communication, memory and compute to ensure real-time, high-quality results. To meet this demand, CoreWeave has launched NVIDIA GB200 NVL72-based instances, becoming the first cloud service provider to make the NVIDIA Blackwell platform generally available. With rack-scale NVIDIA NVLink across 72 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs and 36 NVIDIA Grace CPUs, scaling to up to 110,000 GPUs with NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking, these instances provide the scale and performance needed to build and deploy the next generation of AI reasoning models and agents.

NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 on CoreWeave
NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 is a liquid-cooled, rack-scale solution with a 72-GPU NVLink domain, which enables the six dozen GPUs to act as a single massive GPU. NVIDIA Blackwell features many technological breakthroughs that accelerate inference token generation, boosting performance while reducing service costs. For example, fifth-generation NVLink enables 130 TB/s of GPU bandwidth in one 72-GPU NVLink domain, and the second-generation Transformer Engine enables FP4 for faster AI performance while maintaining high accuracy. CoreWeave's portfolio of managed cloud services is purpose-built for Blackwell. CoreWeave Kubernetes Service optimizes workload orchestration by exposing NVLink domain IDs, ensuring efficient scheduling within the same rack. Slurm on Kubernetes (SUNK) supports the topology block plug-in, enabling intelligent workload distribution across GB200 NVL72 racks. In addition, CoreWeave's Observability Platform provides real-time insights into NVLink performance, GPU utilization and temperatures.

Japan's central government will adjust its control over cutting-edge chips and quantum computer-related technology—a Japan Times news article proposes that new regulations will come into effect by the end of May. The report suggests that the nation's governing body is expanding its list of export-controlled items to include: "advanced chips, lithography equipment and cryo-coolers needed for the manufacture of quantum computers." The publication has gathered this information from revised foreign exchange laws. According to economy ministry officials, companies will be required to apply for external trade licenses—extra measures are being put in place to prevent the export of cutting-edge items to foreign military organizations. The updated terms are viewed as another step in tightening the supply of advanced semiconductor products to mainland China. Recent global events have paved the way for a new wave of AI chip-related restrictions.

Naturally, China has expressed concern regarding upcoming changes—they anticipate problems affecting supply chains and normal commercial exchanges between enterprises. According to the Japan Times report, the Ministry of Commerce in Beijing: "hopes Japan will make sure the measures don't hinder the economic and trade development between the two countries." The two nations have enjoyed a cordial semiconductor-centric trade relationship, skewed more in favor of Japan. Industry watchdogs believe that Chinese manufacturers have generated significant demand for Japanese-made production equipment. Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has updated its documents. According to the latest report, 42 new entities worldwide have been added to a list of: "foreign companies and organizations that would be subject to export oversight on any dual-use items. The additions come into effect on Feb. 5, it said. A total of around 110 Chinese companies, research institutions and other entities are on the list."

Rigetti Computing, Inc., a pioneer in full-stack quantum-classical computing, announced today the public launch of its 84-qubit Ankaa-3 system. Ankaa-3 is Rigetti's newest flagship quantum computer featuring an extensive hardware redesign that enables superior performance. Rigetti also celebrates major two-qubit gate fidelity milestones with Ankaa-3: successfully halving error rates in 2024 to achieve a median 99.0% iSWAP gate fidelity, as well as demonstrating 99.5% median fidelity fSim gates.

Ankaa-3 is now available to its partners via the Rigetti Quantum Cloud Services platform (QCS)and will be coming to Amazon Braket and Microsoft Azure in the first quarter of 2025. Users will be able to operate these higher fidelity and universal iSWAP gates for a wide range of algorithmic research, with a median gate time of 72 nanoseconds. The faster (median 56 nanoseconds), more specialized fSim gates are useful for specific algorithms such as random circuit sampling, as recently demonstrated on Google's Willow system.

Quobly, a leading French quantum computing startup, has reported that FD-SOI technology can serve as a scalable platform for commercial quantum computing, leveraging traditional semiconductor manufacturing fabs and CEA-Leti's R&D pilot line.

The semiconductor industry has played a pivotal role in enabling classical computers to scale at cost; it has the same transformative potential for quantum computers, making them commercially scalable and cost competitive. Silicon spin qubits are excellent for achieving fault-tolerant, large-scale quantum computing, registering clock speeds in the µsec range, fidelity above 99% for one and two-qubit gate operations and incomparably small unit cell sizes (in the hundredths of 100 nm²).

Google Quantum AI lab has announced a huge advancement in quantum computing with its new Willow processor. The chip demonstrated remarkable error correction capabilities and computational power beyond traditional supercomputers, including ExaFLOP machines such as Frontier and El Capitan. In research published in Nature, Google's team showed that Willow can exponentially reduce error rates as more qubits are added to the system—a feat known as operating "below threshold" that has been a major challenge in quantum computing since 1995. Using arrays of quantum bits in increasingly larger grids, the team successfully cut error rates in half with each expansion. The chip's performance is particularly recorded in random circuit sampling (RCS), where Willow completed calculations in under five minutes. Something like that would take today's fastest supercomputer approximately ten septillion years to solve—a timespan far greater than the universe's age.

Manufactured at Google's specialized facility in Santa Barbara, the 105-qubit Willow chip also achieved impressive coherence times, with qubits maintaining their quantum states for up to 100 microseconds—five times longer than previous generations. Dr. Hartmut Neven, who founded Google Quantum AI in 2012, emphasized that the breakthrough brings quantum computing closer to scaling into more complex systems for data processing. Potential applications include discovering new medicines, designing more efficient batteries for electric vehicles, and accelerating fusion energy research. The next challenge for Google's quantum team is demonstrating a "useful, beyond-classical" computation that addresses practical applications. While Willow has shown superior performance in benchmark tests, researchers are now focused on developing algorithms that can tackle commercially relevant problems that are impossible for traditional computers to solve.

IonQ, a leader in the quantum computing and networking industry, today announced the delivery of IonQ Forte Enterprise to its first European Innovation Center at the uptownBasel campus in Arlesheim, Switzerland. Achieved in partnership with QuantumBasel, this major milestone marks the first datacenter-ready quantum computer IonQ has delivered that will operate outside the United States and the first quantum system for commercial use in Switzerland.

Forte Enterprise is now online servicing compute jobs while performing at a record algorithmic qubit count of #AQ36, which is significantly more powerful than the promised #AQ35. With each additional #AQ, the useful computational space for running quantum algorithms doubles. A system with #AQ36 is capable of considering more than 68 billion different possibilities simultaneously. With this milestone, IonQ once again leads the industry in delivering production-ready systems to customers.

Infineon Technologies AG, a global leader in semiconductor solutions, and Quantinuum, a global leader in integrated, full-stack quantum computing, today announced a strategic partnership to develop the future generation of ion traps. This partnership will drive the acceleration of quantum computing and enable progress in fields such as generative chemistry, material science, and artificial intelligence.

"We are thrilled to partner with Quantinuum, a leader in quantum computing, to push the boundaries of quantum computing and generate larger, more powerful machines that solve meaningful real-life problems," said Richard Kuncic, Senior Vice President and General Manager Power Systems at Infineon Technologies. "This collaboration brings together Infineon's state-of-the-art knowledge in process development, fabrication, and quantum processing unit (QPU) technology with Quantinuum's cutting-edge ion-trap design expertise and experience with operating high-performance commercial quantum computers."

Today at its inaugural IBM Quantum Developer Conference, IBM announced quantum hardware and software advancements to execute complex algorithms on IBM quantum computers with record levels of scale, speed, and accuracy.

IBM Quantum Heron, the company's most performant quantum processor to-date and available in IBM's global quantum data centers, can now leverage Qiskit to accurately run certain classes of quantum circuits with up to 5,000 two-qubit gate operations. Users can now use these capabilities to expand explorations in how quantum computers can tackle scientific problems across materials, chemistry, life sciences, high-energy physics, and more.

Gaijin Entertainment and Matter Team are happy to announce Active Matter, a new mind-bending tactical hardcore shooter set in a fractured multiverse. The game will be available for purchase on PC (at Steam and Gaijin.Net stores), PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S in 2025. The exact price and release date will be announced later. The Closed Beta Test of Active Matter is planned for 2024 at Gaijin.Net, and players are welcome to sign up at the game's official website to make sure they do not miss this opportunity.

Active Matter players control operators stuck in a time loop, returning, time and again, to the same point after each death. They choose a loadout and enter quantum-unstable zones, rich in active matter - a substance capable of warping and ripping the very fabric of space and time. Rivals from other timelines, physics-breaking anomalies that change gravitational force and ethereal beings stand in the way. Players harvest active matter, collect the loot and extract to a safe area before the whole zone ceases to exist with everything inside it.

The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) has signed a purchase agreement with IQM Quantum Computers (IQM), a global leader in designing, building, and selling superconducting quantum computers. Under the agreement, IQM will deliver two advanced Radiance quantum systems of 54 qubits and 150 qubits in the second half of 2025 and by the end of 2026, respectively.

The two distinct systems, featuring high-quality qubits and industry-leading fidelities will play a pivotal role in executing quantum algorithms across a range of application domains.

IBM announced today the completion of its latest expansion of the IBM Quantum Data Center in Poughkeepsie, New York, which operates the highest number of available utility-scale quantum computers at a single location in the world. These systems are a part of the more than a dozen quantum computers offered to global clients via the IBM cloud.

To advance its mission of bringing useful quantum computing to the world, IBM has heavily invested in deploying advanced quantum hardware architectures. First introduced late last year, the IBM Quantum Heron processor has now been deployed in IBM's global Quantum Data Center in Poughkeepsie.

Quantum computing. Drug discovery. Fusion energy. Scientific computing and physics-based simulations are poised to make giant steps across domains that benefit humanity as advances in accelerated computing and AI drive the world's next big breakthroughs. NVIDIA unveiled at GTC in March the NVIDIA Blackwell platform, which promises generative AI on trillion-parameter large language models (LLMs) at up to 25x less cost and energy consumption than the NVIDIA Hopper architecture.

Blackwell has powerful implications for AI workloads, and its technology capabilities can also help to deliver discoveries across all types of scientific computing applications, including traditional numerical simulation. By reducing energy costs, accelerated computing and AI drive sustainable computing. Many scientific computing applications already benefit. Weather can be simulated at 200x lower cost and with 300x less energy, while digital twin simulations have 65x lower cost and 58x less energy consumption versus traditional CPU-based systems and others.

NVIDIA today announced that it will accelerate quantum computing efforts at national supercomputing centers around the world with the open-source NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform. Supercomputing sites in Germany, Japan and Poland will use the platform to power the quantum processing units (QPUs) inside their NVIDIA-accelerated high-performance computing systems.

QPUs are the brains of quantum computers that use the behavior of particles like electrons or photons to calculate differently than traditional processors, with the potential to make certain types of calculations faster. Germany's Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) at Forschungszentrum Jülich is installing a QPU built by IQM Quantum Computers as a complement to its JUPITER supercomputer, supercharged by the NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip. The ABCI-Q supercomputer, located at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Japan, is designed to advance the nation's quantum computing initiative. Powered by the NVIDIA Hopper architecture, the system will add a QPU from QuEra. Poland's Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC) has recently installed two photonic QPUs, built by ORCA Computing, connected to a new supercomputer partition accelerated by NVIDIA Hopper.

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.