IBM has published details on a collection of techniques it hopes will usher in quantum advantage, the inflection point at which the utility of quantum computers exceeds that of traditional machines.
The focus is on a process known as error mitigation, which is designed to Boost the consistency and reliability of circuits running on quantum processors by eliminating sources of noise.
IBM says that advances in error mitigation will allow quantum computers to scale steadily in performance, in a similar pattern exhibited over the years in the field of classical computing.
Although plenty has been said about the potential of quantum computers, which exploit a phenomenon known as superposition to perform calculations extremely quickly, the reality is that current systems are incapable of outstripping traditional supercomputers on a consistent basis.
A lot of work is going into improving performance by increasing the number of qubits on a quantum processor, but researchers are also investigating opportunities related to qubit design, the pairing of quantum and classical computers, new refrigeration techniques and more.
IBM, for its part, has now said it believes an investment in error mitigation will bear the most fruit at this stage in the development of quantum computing.
“Indeed, it is widely accepted that one must first build a large fault-tolerant quantum processor before any of the quantum algorithms with proven super-polynomial speed-up can be implemented. Building such a processor therefore is the central goal for our development,” explained IBM, in a blog post (opens in new tab).
“However, latest advances in techniques we refer to broadly as quantum error mitigation allow us to lay out a smoother path towards this goal. Along this path, advances in qubit coherence, gate fidelities, and speed immediately translate to measurable advantage in computation, akin to the steady progress historically observed with classical computers.”
The post is geared towards a highly technical audience and goes into great detail, but the main takeaway is this: the ability to quiet certain sources of error will allow for increasingly complex quantum workloads to be executed with reliable results.
According to IBM, the latest error mitigation techniques go “beyond just theory”, with the advantage of these methods having already been demonstrated on some of the most powerful quantum hardware currently available.
“At IBM Quantum, we plan to continue developing our hardware and software with this path in mind,” the company added.
“At the same time, together with our partners and the growing quantum community, we will continue expanding the list of problems that we can map to quantum circuits and develop better ways of comparing quantum circuit approaches to traditional classical methods to determine if a problem can demonstrate quantum advantage. We fully expect that this continuous path that we have outlined will bring us practical quantum computing.”
- As quantum computing evolves, all new encryption technologies will need to be developed
IBM today announced a new strategy for the implementation of several “error mitigation” techniques designed to bring about the era of fault-tolerant quantum computers.
Up front: Anyone still clinging to the notion that quantum circuits are too noisy for useful computing is about to be disillusioned.
A decade ago, the idea of a working quantum computing system seemed far-fetched to most of us. Today, researchers around the world connect to IBM’s cloud-based quantum systems with such frequency that, according to IBM’s director of quantum infrastructure, some three billion quantum circuits are completed every day.
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IBM and other companies are already using quantum technology to do things that either couldn’t be done by classical binary computers or would take too much time or energy. But there’s still a lot of work to be done.
The dream is to create a useful, fault-tolerant quantum computer capable of demonstrating clear quantum advantage — the point where quantum processors are capable of doing things that classical ones simply cannot.
Background: Here at Neural, we identified quantum computing as the most important technology of 2022 and that’s unlikely to change as we continue the perennial march forward.
The short and long of it is that quantum computing promises to do away with our current computational limits. Rather than replacing the CPU or GPU, it’ll add the QPU (quantum processing unit) to our tool belt.
What this means is up to the individual use case. Most of us don’t need quantum computers because our day-to-day problems aren’t that difficult.
But, for industries such as banking, energy, and security, the existence of new technologies capable of solving problems more complex than today’s technology can represents a paradigm shift the likes of which we may not have seen since the advent of steam power.
If you can imagine a magical machine capable of increasing efficiency across numerous high-impact domains — it could save time, money, and energy at scales that could ultimately affect every human on Earth — then you can understand why IBM and others are so keen on building QPUs that demonstrate quantum advantage.
The problem: Building pieces of hardware capable of manipulating quantum mechanics as a method by which to perform a computation is, as you can imagine, very hard.
IBM’s spent the past decade or so figuring out how to solve the foundational problems plaguing the field — to include the basic infrastructure, cooling, and power source requirements necessary just to get started in the labs.
Today, IBM’s quantum roadmap shows just how far the industry has come:
But to get where it’s going, we need to solve one of the few remaining foundational problems related to the development of useful quantum processors: they’re noisy as heck.
The solution: Noisy qubits are the quantum computer engineer’s current bane. Essentially, the more processing power you try to squeeze out of a quantum computer the noisier its qubits get (qubits are essentially the computer bits of quantum computing).
Until now, the bulk of the work in squelching this noise has involved scaling qubits so that the signal the scientists are trying to read is strong enough to squeeze through.
In the experimental phases, solving noisy qubits was largely a game of Wack-a-mole. As scientists came up with new techniques — many of which were pioneered in IBM laboratories — they pipelined them to researchers for novel application.
But, these days, the field has advanced quite a bit. The art of error mitigation has evolved from targeted one-off solutions to a full suite of techniques.
Per IBM:
Current quantum hardware is subject to different sources of noise, the most well-known being qubit decoherence, individual gate errors, and measurement errors. These errors limit the depth of the quantum circuit that we can implement. However, even for shallow circuits, noise can lead to faulty estimates. Fortunately, quantum error mitigation provides a collection of tools and methods that allow us to evaluate accurate expectation values from noisy, shallow depth quantum circuits, even before the introduction of fault tolerance.
In latest years, we developed and implemented two general-purpose error mitigation methods, called zero noise extrapolation (ZNE) and probabilistic error cancellation (PEC).
Both techniques involve extremely complex applications of quantum mechanics, but they basically boil down to finding ways to eliminate or squelch the noise coming off quantum systems and/or to amplify the signal that scientists are trying to measure for quantum computations and other processes.
Neural’s take: We spoke to IBM’s director of quantum infrastructure, Jerry Chow, who seemed pretty excited about the new paradigm.
He explained that the techniques being touted in the new press release were already in production. IBM’s already demonstrated massive improvements in their ability to scale solutions, repeat cutting-edge results, and speed up classical processes using quantum hardware.
The bottom line is that quantum computers are here, and they work. Currently, it’s a bit hit or miss whether they can solve a specific problem better than classical systems, but the last remaining hard obstacle is fault-tolerance.
IBM’s new “error mitigation” strategy signals a change from the discovery phase of fault-tolerance solutions to implementation.
We tip our hats to the IBM quantum research team. Learn more here at IBM’s official blog.
The guides leverage Astadia’s 25+ years of expertise in partnering with organizations to reduce costs, risks and timeframes when migrating their IBM mainframe applications to cloud platforms
BOSTON, August 03, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Astadia is pleased to announce the release of a new series of Mainframe-to-Cloud reference architecture guides. The documents cover how to refactor IBM mainframes applications to Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). The documents offer a deep dive into the migration process to all major target cloud platforms using Astadia’s FastTrack software platform and methodology.
As enterprises and government agencies are under pressure to modernize their IT environments and make them more agile, scalable and cost-efficient, refactoring mainframe applications in the cloud is recognized as one of the most efficient and fastest modernization solutions. By making the guides available, Astadia equips business and IT professionals with a step-by-step approach on how to refactor mission-critical business systems and benefit from highly automated code transformation, data conversion and testing to reduce costs, risks and timeframes in mainframe migration projects.
"Understanding all aspects of legacy application modernization and having access to the most performant solutions is crucial to accelerating digital transformation," said Scott G. Silk, Chairman and CEO. "More and more organizations are choosing to refactor mainframe applications to the cloud. These guides are meant to assist their teams in transitioning fast and safely by benefiting from Astadia’s expertise, software tools, partnerships, and technology coverage in mainframe-to-cloud migrations," said Mr. Silk.
The new guides are part of Astadia’s free Mainframe-to-Cloud Modernization series, an ample collection of guides covering various mainframe migration options, technologies, and cloud platforms. The series covers IBM (NYSE:IBM) Mainframes.
In addition to the reference architecture diagrams, these comprehensive guides include various techniques and methodologies that may be used in forming a complete and effective Legacy Modernization plan. The documents analyze the important role of the mainframe platform, and how to preserve previous investments in information systems when transitioning to the cloud.
In each of the IBM Mainframe Reference Architecture white papers, readers will explore:
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Benefits, approaches, and challenges of mainframe modernization
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Understanding typical IBM Mainframe Architecture
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An overview of Azure/AWS/Google Cloud/Oracle Cloud
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Detailed diagrams of IBM mappings to Azure/AWS/ Google Cloud/Oracle Cloud
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How to ensure project success in mainframe modernization
The guides are available for get here:
To access more mainframe modernization resources, visit the Astadia learning center on www.astadia.com.
About Astadia
Astadia is the market-leading software-enabled mainframe migration company, specializing in moving IBM and Unisys mainframe applications and databases to distributed and cloud platforms in unprecedented timeframes. With more than 30 years of experience, and over 300 mainframe migrations completed, enterprises and government organizations choose Astadia for its deep expertise, range of technologies, and the ability to automate complex migrations, as well as testing at scale. Learn more on www.astadia.com.
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In the 1970s and 1980s, a lot of us learned to program using good old-fashioned BASIC on machines ranging from Altairs, Commodores, Apple IIs, and the like. Sometime in the 80’s the IBM PC running MSDOS because the de facto standard, but it was still easy enough to launch BASIC and write a simple little program. Of course, there were other programs, some serious like C compilers, some semi-serious like flight simulators, and some pure fun like Wolfenstein 3D.
If you read Hackaday, you’ve probably noticed that a lot of people emulate old computers–including old MSDOS PCs–using a variety of techniques, including Raspberry PI boards running DOSBox or another emulator. Honestly, though, that’s a lot of effort just to run some old software, right? You can load up DOS emulators on your desktop too. That’s a little easier, but you still have to find software. But if you are as lazy as we are, you might want to check out the MSDOS collection at archive.org.
The collection has over 7,000 old MSDOS titles which is impressive. But what is fascinating is that they will all run inside your Web browser. You are two clicks away from running BASIC, Borland C, flight simulators, or even Commander Keen. Be careful, though. Some key strokes (like Control+C) may not work in the browser.
If you are really hardcore, you can even boot some old versions of Windows in your browser. Or, if you want to go further back in time, try emulating DOS in your browser and then emulating a TRS-80 under DOS. There’s even old versions of Microsoft Word and Wordperfect if you want to write blog posts old school.
If you wish to do some hardware hacking, you don’t have to do all this in the browser. There are also plenty of old computers you can emulate in your browser. There’s even a Windows 95 in a browser (see the video below).
You don’t have to be a physicist to know that noise and quantum computing don’t mix. Any noise, movement or temperature swing causes qubits – the quantum computing equivalent to a binary bit in classical computing – to fail.
That’s one of the main reasons quantum advantage (the point at which quantum surpasses classic computing) and quantum supremacy (when quantum computers solve a problem not feasible for classical computing) feel like longer-term goals and emerging technology. It’s worth the wait, though, as quantum computers promise exponential increases over classic computing, which tops out at supercomputing. However, due to the intricacies of quantum physics (e.g., entanglement), quantum computers are also more prone to errors based on environmental factors when compared to supercomputers or high-performance computers.
Quantum errors arise from what’s known as decoherence, a process that occurs when noise or nonoptimal temperatures interfere with qubits, changing their quantum states and causing information stored by the quantum computer to be lost.
The road(s) to quantum
Many enterprises view quantum computing technology as a zero-sum scenario and that if you want value from a quantum computer, you need fault-tolerant quantum processors and a multitude of qubits. While we wait, we’re stuck in the NISQ era — noisy intermediate-scale quantum — where quantum hasn’t surpassed classical computers.
That’s an impression IBM hopes to change.
In a blog published today by IBM, its quantum team (Kristan Temme, Ewout van den Berg, Abhinav Kandala and Jay Gambett) writes that the history of classical computing is one of incremental advances.
“Although quantum computers have seen tremendous improvements in their scale, quality and speed in latest years, such a gradual evolution seems to be missing from the narrative,” the team wrote. “However, latest advances in techniques we refer to broadly as quantum error mitigation allow us to lay out a smoother path towards this goal. Along this path, advances in qubit coherence, gate fidelities and speed immediately translate to measurable advantage in computation, akin to the steady progress historically observed with classical computers.”
Finding value in noisy qubits
In a move to get a quantum advantage sooner – and in incremental steps – IBM claims to have created a technique that’s designed to tap more value from noisy qubits and move away from NISQ.
Instead of focusing solely on fault-tolerant computers. IBM’s goal is continuous and incremental improvements, Jerry Chow, the director of hardware development for IBM Quantum, told VentureBeat.
To mitigate errors, Chow points to IBM’s new probabilistic error cancellation, a technique designed to invert noisy quantum circuits to achieve error-free results, even though the circuits themselves are noisy. It does bring a runtime tradeoff, he said, because you’re giving up running more circuits to gain insight into the noise causing the errors.
The goal of the new technique is to provide a step, rather than a leap, towards quantum supremacy. It’s “a near-term solution,” Chow said, and a part of a suite of techniques that will help IBM learn about error correction through error migration. “As you increase the runtime, you learn more as you run more qubits,” he explained.
Chow said that while IBM continues to scale its quantum platform, this offers an incremental step. Last year, IBM unveiled a 127-qubit Eagle processor, which is capable of running quantum circuits that can’t be replicated classically. Based on its quantum roadmap laid out in May, IBM systems is on track to reach 4,000-plus qubit quantum devices in 2025.
Not an either-or scenario: Quantum starts now
Probabilistic error cancellation represents a shift for IBM and the quantum field overall. Rather than relying solely on experiments to achieve full error correction under certain circumstances, IBM has focused on a continuous push to address quantum errors today while still moving toward fault-tolerant machines, Chow said. “You need high-quality hardware to run billions of circuits. Speed is needed. The goal is not to do error mitigation long-term. It’s not all or nothing.”
IBM quantum computing bloggers add that its quantum error mitigation technique “is the continuous path that will take us from today’s quantum hardware to tomorrow’s fault-tolerant quantum computers. This path will let us run larger circuits needed for quantum advantage, one hardware improvement at a time.”
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LAWRENCE, Kan.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 28, 2022--
Cobalt Iron Inc., a leading provider of SaaS-based enterprise data protection, today announced that the company has been deemed one of the 10 Most Promising IBM Solution Providers 2022 by CIOReview Magazine. The annual list of companies is selected by a panel of experts and members of CIOReview Magazine’s editorial board to recognize and promote innovation and entrepreneurship. A technology partner for IBM, Cobalt Iron earned the distinction based on its Compass ® enterprise SaaS backup platform for monitoring, managing, provisioning, and securing the entire enterprise backup landscape.
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Cobalt Iron Compass® is a SaaS-based data protection platform leveraging strong IBM technologies for delivering a secure, modernized approach to data protection. (Graphic: Business Wire)
According to CIOReview, “Cobalt Iron has built a patented cyber-resilience technology in a SaaS model to alleviate the complexities of managing large, multivendor setups, providing an effectual humanless backup experience. This SaaS-based data protection platform, called Compass, leverages strong IBM technologies. For example, IBM Spectrum Protect is embedded into the platform from a data backup and recovery perspective. ... By combining IBM’s technologies and the intellectual property built by Cobalt Iron, the company delivers a secure, modernized approach to data protection, providing a ‘true’ software as a service.”
Through proprietary technology, the Compass data protection platform integrates with, automates, and optimizes best-of-breed technologies, including IBM Spectrum Protect, IBM FlashSystem, IBM Red Hat Linux, IBM Cloud, and IBM Cloud Object Storage. Compass enhances and extends IBM technologies by automating more than 80% of backup infrastructure operations, optimizing the backup landscape through analytics, and securing backup data, making it a valuable addition to IBM’s data protection offerings.
CIOReview also praised Compass for its simple and intuitive interface to display a consolidated view of data backups across an entire organization without logging in to every backup product instance to extract data. The machine learning-enabled platform also automates backup processes and infrastructure, and it uses open APIs to connect with ticket management systems to generate tickets automatically about any backups that need immediate attention.
To ensure the security of data backups, Cobalt Iron has developed an architecture and security feature set called Cyber Shield for 24/7 threat protection, detection, and analysis that improves ransomware responsiveness. Compass is also being enhanced to use several patented techniques that are specific to analytics and ransomware. For example, analytics-based cloud brokering of data protection operations helps enterprises make secure, efficient, and cost-effective use of their cloud infrastructures. Another patented technique — dynamic IT infrastructure optimization in response to cyberthreats — offers unique ransomware analytics and automated optimization that will enable Compass to reconfigure IT infrastructure automatically when it detects cyberthreats, such as a ransomware attack, and dynamically adjust access to backup infrastructure and data to reduce exposure.
Compass is part of IBM’s product portfolio through the IBM Passport Advantage program. Through Passport Advantage, IBM sellers, partners, and distributors around the world can sell Compass under IBM part numbers to any organizations, particularly complex enterprises, that greatly benefit from the automated data protection and anti-ransomware solutions Compass delivers.
CIOReview’s report concludes, “With such innovations, all eyes will be on Cobalt Iron for further advancements in humanless, secure data backup solutions. Cobalt Iron currently focuses on IP protection and continuous R&D to bring about additional cybersecurity-related innovations, promising a more secure future for an enterprise’s data.”
About Cobalt Iron
Cobalt Iron was founded in 2013 to bring about fundamental changes in the world’s approach to secure data protection, and today the company’s Compass ® is the world’s leading SaaS-based enterprise data protection system. Through analytics and automation, Compass enables enterprises to transform and optimize legacy backup solutions into a simple cloud-based architecture with built-in cybersecurity. Processing more than 8 million jobs a month for customers in 44 countries, Compass delivers modern data protection for enterprise customers around the world. www.cobaltiron.com
Product or service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.
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Photo Caption: Cobalt Iron Compass ® is a SaaS-based data protection platform leveraging strong IBM technologies for delivering a secure, modernized approach to data protection.
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PUB: 07/28/2022 09:00 AM/DISC: 07/28/2022 09:03 AM
