Cunning Systems

Quantum weeknotes 7 & 8

lower-res images of BTO wafer at Sanmina – Omega from PsiQuantum Feb 2025

Psi Quantum https://www.reuters.com/business/psiquantum-valued-7-billion-latest-funding-round-teams-up-with-nvidia-2025-09-10/

https://www.investors.com/news/technology/quantum-computing-stocks-nvidia-psiquantum-quera/

https://www.optica-opn.org/home/industry/2025/september/psiquantum_raises_us$1_billion/

“Nearly nine years after we started, we have pushed the technology to an unprecedented level of maturity and performance” said Pete Shadbolt, PsiQuantum cofounder and Chief Scientific Officer. “We have the chips, we have the switches, we have a scalable cooling technology, we can do networking, we have found the sites, we have the commercial motive and the government support—we’re ready to get on and build utility-scale systems.”https://arxiv.org/html/2404.17570v1 26 Apr 2024 A manufacturable platform for photonic quantum computing with photons Global Foundries Has switches. List of required improvements.

HPC prep https://insidehpc.com/2025/09/hyperion-research-and-alice-bob-report-on-how-hpc-centers-can-prepare-for-quantum/

Quantum computing application lists and trends in capability https://alice-bob.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Seizing-Quantum-Edge-eFTQC-HPC-Report-Alice-Bob.pdf

“Alice & Bob is a quantum computing company based in Paris and Boston whose goal is to create the first universal, fault-tolerant quantum computer. Founded in 2020, Alice & Bob has already raised €130 million in funding, hired over 150 employees and demonstrated experimental results surpassing those of technology giants such as Google or IBM. Alice & Bob specializes in cat qubits, a pioneering technology developed by the company’s founders and later adopted by Amazon. Demonstrating the power of its cat architecture, Alice & Bob recently showed that it could reduce the hardware requirements for building a useful large-scale quantum computer by up to 200 times compared with competing approaches.”

Wilson Sonsini on IP strategy for quantum “We’re seeing a shift from research-heavy moonshots to more application-oriented investments—companies developing near-term commercial use cases like quantum sensing, quantum-secure communications, and hybrid AI systems. VC interest will likely follow the path we saw with AI: from foundational tools to vertical-specific applications. Expect to see more funding into enabling technologies, such as cryogenic systems, photonics, and error-correction software.”

Phasecraft Quantum algorithms https://www.phasecraft.io/ for simulation Funding https://www.phasecraft.io/news/phasecraft-raises-34-million-from-plural-playground-novo The company’s core business is to design quantum algorithms that significantly reduce the hardware requirements—such as the number of qubits and circuit depth—needed to solve complex problems, thereby accelerating the timeline to achieving quantum advantage. Phasecraft’s revenue model is centered on partnerships with both quantum hardware manufacturers and companies in various industries that stand to benefit from quantum computation. By collaborating with hardware leaders like Google, IBM, Rigetti, Quantinuum, and QuEra, Phasecraft gains access to the most advanced quantum processors to test and refine its algorithms. “Our algorithms are delivering meaningful results now, whether it’s simulating the physics of complex materials or optimizing the structure of a large energy network “

https://www.reuters.com/business/honeywells-quantinuum-raises-funds-nvidia-others-10-billion-valuation-2025-09-04/ Honeywell’s Quantinuum $10b raise; lining up to IPO

Phasecraft – algorithms https://www.phasecraft.io/news/phasecraft-raises-34-million-from-plural-playground-novo Bristol, London

https://www.ft.com/content/51f293fb-4e43-415b-80a6-516c7b2932ea Quantum hardware hasn’t improved enough yet to run these algorithms ..

Infrastructure, quantum, Travel

Weeknotes 6

North Queensferry and the Forth bridges from the train on the railway bridge.

There wasn’t so much quantum technology this week, and more administration. The concept of distributed infrastructure had to be explained to some of the audience using familiar consumer experiences.

There was a useful note about the NQCC quantum computing testbeds https://www.eetimes.com/u-k-startup-scaling-quantum-computing-with-photonics/

Aegiq is one of two companies on the NQCC campus utilizing silicon photonics to deliver a full stack quantum computing platform.

Infrastructure, quantum

Weeknotes 5

Quantum hasn’t yet got to the point where I can say, like I did with Cisco routers long ago “I know where the bits come from and go to underneath that piece of road digging”, though there have been SQUIDs (superconducting quantum interference devices) in use as very sensitive magnetometers for a long time. SQUID sensors market trends

Packaging and photonics links

Lasers https://www.scottishfinancialnews.com/articles/scottish-tech-firm-powerphotonic-targets-new-markets-with-ps26m-maven-funding-boost Maven Capital Partners has invested £2.6 million in Scottish advanced laser systems pioneer PowerPhotonic .. follow on from Archangels and Scottish Enterprise Headquartered in Dalgety Bay, Scotland, with a high-volume manufacturing facility in Arizona, USA, PowerPhotonic is a global leader in precision micro-optics for laser applications.

https://www.novuslight.com/first-electronic-photonic-quantum-chip-manufactured-in-commercial-foundry_N13549.html Global Foundries. Northwestern University, Boston University (BU) and University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) have built a tiny photonic quantum system into a traditional electronic chip.

Nvidia co-packaged silicon photonics – switches – and the partner list https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/networking/products/silicon-photonics/https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/scaling-ai-factories-with-co-packaged-optics-for-better-power-efficiency/ block diagrams

Microsoft – quantum safe cryptography https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2025/08/20/quantum-safe-security-progress-towards-next-generation-cryptography/

quantum

Quantum weeknotes 4

Those banners again : representing Stedman Doubles

There was a peal of bells, ringing Stedman Doubles, to celebrate the art of bellringing at St Marys in Edinburgh.

More quantum computing and networking material. I’m reading in to the topic, looking for examples of actual utility as well as examples of investment for building out infrastructure.

Q-CTRL Calibration for quantum computing https://q-ctrl.com/technology/quantum-computer-autocalibration? a robust state machine that orchestrates routines from the Function Library, translating them into controller-specific commands and executing them on local hardware. Measurement data flows back for analysis, powering a continuous feedback loop that enhances system performance over time.

Rigetti 2Q results PR https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/08/12/3132141/0/en/Rigetti-Computing-Reports-Second-Quarter-2025-Financial-Results-Announces-General-Availability-of-its-36-Qubit-Multi-Chip-Quantum-Computer.html $350m raise Cepheus-1-36Q is the first multi-chip quantum computer in the industry to achieve this level of performance, and with four chips, contains the largest number of chiplets in a quantum computer. Superconducting qubits. Enhanced intermodule coupler design: Advances in multi-layer chip and tunable coupler design enables higher performance.

Trapped Ions Quantum computing Oxford Ionics https://tech.eu/2025/08/13/oxford-ionics-installs-quantum-computer-at-nqcc $20m revenue
Cloudflare on security for Post Quantum Computing https://www.eetimes.com/inside-the-pqc-overhaul-a-year-later/ Cloudflare has already integrated post-quantum key agreements into the majority of its infrastructure. “Post-quantum encryption is already becoming the default,” Westerbaan said. “I expect that within a year, most TLS connections on the internet will be quantum-secure.” Nevertheless, full migration across hardware, embedded systems, and critical infrastructure will take much longer.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250715219783/en/IonQ-Completes-Acquisition-of-Capella-Space-Advancing-Vision-for-Space-Based-Quantum-Communications IonQ buys Capella Space – Quantum Key Distribution via satellite

Funding $1.6B rolling up other quantum functions https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/ionq-secures-1-6-billion-190000833.html

IonQ press https://investors.ionq.com/news/default.aspx Chemical simulation https://investors.ionq.com/news/news-details/2025/IonQ-Speeds-Quantum-Accelerated-Drug-Development-Application-With-AstraZeneca-AWS-and-NVIDIA/default.aspx IonQ and its partners demonstrated a large-scale, end-to-end simulation of a Suzuki-Miyaura reaction, which is the most complex chemical simulation run on IonQ hardware to date. (catalytic reaction with palladium for organic chemistry) The hybrid quantum-classical workflow – orchestrated via CUDA-Q on Amazon Braket, accelerated with NVIDIA H200 GPUs through AWS ParallelCluster – delivered more than a 20x speedup in time-to-solution compared to prior benchmarks. This advancement highlights the scalability of IonQ’s quantum systems and their practical potential in pharmaceutical R&D.

Isolated quantum virtual machines https://techxplore.com/news/2025-07-quantum-bottlenecks-breakthroughs.html HyperQ https://www.usenix.org/system/files/osdi25-tao.pdf

Edinburgh, quantum

Quantum weeknotes 3

St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, Edinburgh

Music as well as quantum this week since the Festival is on. The banners in the Cathedral depict bellringing changes. Artist Edward Bruce, architect Nick O’Neill. There’s a peal of 12 bells. The Cathedral has lunchtime recitals every day for the next two weeks, and other music.

IBM on quantum advantage .. quantum + classical advantage https://www.nextplatform.com/2025/08/05/ibm-outlines-steps-to-verify-claims-of-quantum-advantage/

IBM and Pasqual paper .. framework for measuring quantum advantage https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.20658

IBM expects the first claims of quantum advantage will come from efforts in sampling problems, variational programs, and calculating the expectation values of observables. The challenge now will be to “rigorously confirm” when an advantage has occurred, the researchers wrote. Each part of the computation will have to be verified on their own merit through error detection and mitigation.

If this is the best that IBM can do to explain for what quantum computing should be used, compared to classical computing, there’s a lot of work to do yet.

Cisco quantum marketing https://newsroom.cisco.com/c/r/newsroom/en/us/a/y2025/m07/at-cisco-bold-steps-towards-a-quantum-network.html

quantum entanglement source chip comes in. Pandey called it, “the first building block of a quantum network.” And Nejabati outlined its power and unique attributes.

“Our chip can generate up to 200 million pairs of entangled photons per second,” Nejabati said. “That’s a very high rate. We do it by injecting laser light into our chip, which converts every single photon to two lower-energy entangled photons. And since they are entangled at telco frequency, they can be transported easily. You don’t need a special transport catalyst, just a normal fiber can transfer your entangled photons.” .. entangled particles can transfer or share information, across any distance, via a phenomenon known as teleportation.

“The beauty of it is that photons or other particles could be separated physically, even by a large distance,” “Entanglement actually allows us to transfer quantum information through the teleportation phenomenon.”

Marketing about UK quantum ecosystem and UK Quantum (Sussex) https://tech.eu/2025/07/31/uk-quantum-computing-is-going-universal-through-scaling

Trapped ion “Their solution starts with the iQPU, or integrated Quantum Processing Unit—a proprietary trapped-ion chip designed from the ground up for manufacturability and performance. Each chip is fabricated on a standard 200mm commercial foundry line, a decision that makes industrial scaling feasible. The iQPU itself hosts hundreds of ion qubits on a die larger than 400mm², making it the most spacious chip of its kind in development.

Critically, the chip uses global microwave control rather than relying on traditional laser-based systems. This removed much of the optical complexity found in competing designs and simplifies the overall architecture.

To stitch multiple iQPUs together, UQ developed UQConnect, a proprietary interconnect system that links chips at a rate of 2,424 connections per second, with an ultra-high fidelity of 99.999993%.

Full stack, €67 million contract from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) .. raised close to 100 million pounds.

Financing for quantum https://ff.co/quantum-computing/