Quantum computing has long been considered as a field that generates improbable futuristic scenarios, but today it has become a very real breeding ground for development that will soon be able to serve Quebec companies with the entry into activity in Bromont of the quantum supercomputer of IBM, a machine that only exists in five countries in the world.
Quantum computing, born from the intersection of computing and quantum physics, is a field of research that has been progressing for more than 70 years and which arouses fascination as much as it is not easily popularized.
In the novel prisoners of time by best-selling writer Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park), published in 1999, quantum computing allows a megalomaniac researcher to build a computer powerful enough to allow the transmission of thousands of data that characterize human beings.
We are witnessing the creation of a time machine that transports a specialist from the Middle Ages in the middle of the Hundred Years War and who obviously gets lost in it…
In the novel Origin written at the same time by Dan Brown, another successful author who notably wrote Da Vinci Codea young futurist arrives with the help of a quantum supercomputer and artificial intelligence to answer the two great existential questions of all: where do we come from and where are we going?
If quantum computing has opened up a world of infinite potential in the realm of science fiction, its advanced computing capabilities – far superior to those of classical digital computing – are increasingly essential in multiple fields of science. research and economic activities.
In its desire to bring Quebec companies to achieve and accelerate their digital transformation, the Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Energy, in collaboration with the University of Sherbrooke, has set up the Platform for digital and quantum innovation of Quebec (PINQ2) in Sherbrooke.
Announced with great fanfare three years ago, PINQ2 is in operation today and it is this platform that will operate from September IBM’s quantum supercomputer, the Quantum System One, for which the government has acquired user rights for the next five years at a cost of 68 million .
The quantum supercomputer will be installed in the coming months at the IBM semiconductor plant in Bromont, but the management of the supermachine will be done by PINQ2 through cloud computing.
The innovation platform also works in collaboration with the Quantum Institute of the University of Sherbrooke as well as the University of Montreal and Concordia.
“We offer a hybrid environment with classical and quantum computing. We have already started projects using IBM’s quantum computers in New York, but from September we will do so with the Bromont supercomputer, which will ensure the sovereignty of our data”, explained to me Éric Capelle, general manager. by PINQ2this week at the launch of this next step.
Develop algorithms
No, the Bromont quantum supercomputer will not solve the enigma of the origin of the world. However, it will open up possibilities for companies and researchers who will use its unparalleled computing power to develop algorithms that conventional computing is unable to achieve.
“To simulate the properties of an insulin molecule with a conventional computer would require a machine the size of a country or even the Earth. A quantum computer offers immense computing possibilities to develop much more complex algorithms. We have gone from analog to digital and now quantum is taking us elsewhere,” explains Jean-François Barsoum, Executive Director of Innovation at IBM.
The Bromont quantum supercomputer will be used to optimize operational research and to develop, in particular, new materials, new drugs, solutions for the energy, environment and manufacturing sectors, as well as risk management algorithms for the financial world.
It is expected that about twenty companies will use its potential in the first year and that about a hundred projects could be added to it annually thereafter.
“We want to be close to universities and large organizations like Mila or IVADO as well as SMEs through college technology transfer centres. We already have start-ups like LeddarTech participating in projects,” says Éric Capelle, from PINQ.2.
IBM uses about twenty of its quantum supercomputers in its research center in New York and only four states in the world have or will soon have a Quantum System One, Germany, Japan, South Korea and soon Quebec .
The good thing is that each new version of the quantum supercomputer is more efficient than the previous ones. The one in Bromont has additional artificial intelligence functionalities, which will benefit our researchers in the field.
Jean-François Barsoum, Executive Director Innovation at IBM
The federal government this week announced a $40 million investment to enable Toronto-based Xanadu Quantum Technologies to build a $180 million photonics-based quantum computer.
According to the National Research Council of Canada, Canada’s quantum industry is expected to generate $140 billion in annual economic activity by 2045. So expect Bromont’s first new quantum computer to make small over the next few years, that’s really where the world of the infinitely small and the inordinately large is heading.