More windfarm components

Windfarm jackets, from Wardie Bay. The seven jackets are on the Xin Hao Yua

Early in the year the semi-subs arriving started to have a mixture of transition pieces and these jackets, which are used instead of the monopiles in the previous post for deeper water.

They are much the biggest things to have arrived in Edinburgh in one piece. The thing at the left of the image is the bow of the cargo ship.

Feet of the jackets

For a hint of the scale of these things, there’s a person in a high vis jacket just to the left of the red vehicle, with his head concealed by the metal framing; this metal is welded to the deck for shipping and cut off before the things are moved. The grey thing along to the left is one of the 10 axle dollies which are inserted under the feet to roll them along the dock.

The big yellow things make a new feature on the skyline; they tend to pop up behind buildings when you didn’t think that was where the dock was..

Inchcape windfarm has many better pictures and an explanation here

Building a windfarm

There’s not been much public blogging lately because I’ve been posting the quantum notes in private, for the project which I’m supporting to spinout from Heriot Watt university.

There’s a different big infrastructure project going on, and we have a way to get pictures of some of the components that it takes to build.

The heavy semi-sub Xiang Tai Kou

We’d watched the Xiang Tai Kou backing in to the deep water dock at Leith on the evening of 11 October 2025, trying to see from 2 miles up town (with binoculars) what she was carrying. Eight huge cylinders .. monopiles for the Inch Cape windfarm. For scale, the Targe Guillemot holding position in front of it is 25m long. The big ship is 231m long and 46m wide.

This was the first arrival of a procession of these Chinese flagged heavy deck cargo vessels, last port Suez. It was preceeded by months of dredging, in the channels on the Forth as well as in the entry to the main Leith dock behind the lock.

The dredger Magnor, February 2025

That operation also had at least three tugs involved, the GPS Avenger, Union Onyx and Union Topaz, moving and shepherding the big hulls being used for the material dredged up.

Sheng Chang 777 on the 23rd October 2025

The next ship in was the Sheng Chang; this image has people underneath the monopiles.

Wei Xiao Tian Shi on the 31st October 2025

This was the third ship in; there were 8 bogies with 10 axles each underneath the cylinders.

Heavy lift vessel Les Alizés, 23 December 2025

This is the start of the next stage, where the heavy lift vessel loaded on 5 of the monopiles and went off to set them in place at the windfarm, which is more or less due East of Dundee.

Inch Cape wind farm is offshore Montrose, connected to Cockenzie by subsea cable. The lift ship, made in China, is owned by a Belgian company, Jan de Nul, headquartered in Luxembourg.

Weeknotes 12

The big quantum physics story of the week was the Nobel Prize for Physics award. There’s a useful explanation of quantum mechanics https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2025/popular-information/ 

When you throw a ball at a wall, you can be sure it will bounce back at you. You would be extremely surprised if the ball suddenly appeared on the other side of a solid wall. This is exactly the type of phenomenon that has given quantum physics a reputation for being bizarre and unintuitive. ©Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Working my way through the latest Air Street Capital ‘State of AI’ report; 313 rather dense slides. No summary yet.

Low power high bit rate random number generator space rated, Heriot Watt development and Nature paper

From: A 2-Gbps low-SWaP quantum random number generator with photonic integrated circuits for satellite applications

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41534-025-01100-2 Heriot Watt A 2-Gbps low-SWaP quantum random number generator with photonic integrated circuits for satellite applications

The QRNG architecture can be integrated with an overhead power consumption of just 7.93 W, accounting for the opto-electronics and FPGA implementation, providing fast random number generation at up to 2 Gbps. We demonstrate the real-time seeding of a free-space decoy-state quantum key distribution system using our QRNG. Our design and implementation provides a practical solution for QRNGs requiring low-power and high bit rates.

Weeknotes 11

NuQuantum parts at an Amadeus demo day event

55North Quantum investment fund Denmark https://tech.eu/2025/10/02/denmark-launches-the-worlds-largest-quantum-fund 

ETSI standardisation  https://www.etsi.org/newsroom/press-releases/2594-etsi-creates-new-committee-on-quantum-technologies

Key Areas of Activity:

  • Quantum Communications: Secure data transmission using quantum principles like superposition and entanglement.
  • Quantum Networking: Connecting quantum systems for distributed computing and cryptography.
  • Quantum Sensing: Enabling ultra-precise measurements for quantum communication networks.
  • Satellite Quantum Communications: Standardising beacon signals, interfaces, and security for space-based quantum systems.
  • Quantum Random Number Generators (QRNGs): Generating true randomness for secure applications.
  • Quantum Security: Establishing methodologies to assess hardware vulnerabilities and side-channel attack risks.


Quantum Brilliance (Australia and Fraunhofer Institute) : room temperature quantum computing using a nitrogen vacancy centred in a diamond lattice – Oak Ridge https://www.eetimes.com/quantum-brilliance-makes-devices-that-keep-their-cool/

Sensor market – Innatera. Netherlands. https://innatera.com/blog/lessons-from-the-floor-what-global-events-reveal-about-the-future-of-ai-sensing 


Caltech https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/caltech-team-sets-record-with-6100-qubit-array Even with more than 6,000 qubits in a single array, the team kept them in superposition for about 13 seconds—nearly 10 times longer than what was possible in previous similar arrays—while manipulating individual qubits with 99.98 percent accuracy. Looking ahead, the researchers plan to link the qubits in their array together in a state of entanglement, where particles become correlated and behave as one. Entanglement is a necessary step for quantum computers to move beyond simply storing information in superposition; entanglement will allow them to begin carrying out full quantum computations.

Nscale building UK supercomputer with Nvidia GPUs https://www.nscale.com/press-releases/nscale-uk-ai-infrastructure-announcement Sept 25th, raised $1.1B https://www.nscale.com/press-releases/nscale-series-b

Weeknotes 10

Atom array architecture for continuous reloading. Credit: Nature (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09596-6

These notes are my collection of recent press material and research references for quantum computing and quantum networking, with emphasis on pointers towards real products developing from the theoretical physics and comprehensible explanations for businesses looking for opportunities and risks.

3000 qubits for 2 hours

https://phys.org/news/2025-09-qubit-neutral-atom-array-reloads.html 

Nature paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09596-6 (restricted access) Harvard, MIT, ETH Zurich authors

Advancements can enable faster, more reliable quantum networking and entanglement distribution, in addition to boosting the engineering of things like continuously operating atomic clocks and quantum sensors with higher stability and bandwidth.

Quantum hardware not required for post quantum cryptography resistance https://blog.cloudflare.com/you-dont-need-quantum-hardware/ Why QKD doesn’t scale

More quantum advantage – 12 qubits – trapped ions https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9138 https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.07255 

[Submitted on 8 Sep 2025]

Demonstrating an unconditional separation between quantum and classical information resources

William Kretschmer, Sabee Grewal, Matthew DeCross, Justin A. Gerber, Kevin Gilmore, Dan Gresh, Nicholas Hunter-Jones, Karl Mayer, Brian Neyenhuis, David Hayes, Scott Aaronson
High fidelity entangling gates between two processors 0.3m apart https://phys.org/news/2025-08-high-fidelity-entangling-gates-remote.html

IonQ , US Air Force Research https://quantumcomputingreport.com/ionq-and-afrl-demonstrate-quantum-frequency-conversion-to-telecom-wavelengths/

Trapped ions ..  the company plans to soon connect two quantum computers using commercial fiber infrastructure

BT testbench Sitehop announcement

https://sitehop.com/secure-scalable-and-sovereign-what-sitehops-bt-trial-means-for-uk-telecoms/ 

Results 

  • 90Gbps throughput
  • 75% reduction in power consumption
  • Minimal packet loss and improved latency
  • Just two clicks to configure and deploy

This was a full proof of concept in a real-world environment. The trial proved that our SAFE Series hardware can run high-speed encryption with near-zero impact on performance, even in demanding telecom conditions.

HSBC IBM research paper : Enhanced fill probability estimates in institutional algorithmic bond trading using statistical learning algorithms with quantum computers https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17715 Our work demonstrates the emerging potential of quantum computing as a complementary explorative tool in quantitative finance and encourages applied industry research towards practical applications in trading 

Interconnection for Nvidia GPUs and superconducting digital chips https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/seeqc-and-the-nqcc-announce-first-digital-interface-system-for-scalable-quantum-error-correction-in-collaboration-with-nvidia-302560779.html? 

SEEQC designs and manufactures superconducting digital chips, firmware, and software for scalable, energy-efficient quantum computing systems based on its proprietary Single Flux Quantum (SFQ) chips produced at the company’s multi-layer superconductive electronics chip foundry located in Elmsford, NY. This chip-based architecture is designed to increase performance while reducing quantum requirements, complexity, cost, and latency. SEEQC’s chip-based solution is augmented by the company’s PRISM firmware and software that supports a full spectrum of applications for third-party developers.

Cisco announces quantum compiler and demo days https://blogs.cisco.com/news/cisco-quantum-labs-announces-software-that-networks-quantum-computers-together-and-enables-new-classical-applications? Cisco Quantum Summit, next week on September 30 and October 1, 2025 ..