Q-CTRL launches service to help with cloud-based quantum computing
Australian startup Q-CTRL has launched "Quantum Professional Services" to assist organisations seeking to exploit the power of cloud-based quantum computers.
Q-CTRL, a commercial spinoff from the University of Sydney, said organisations across verticals such as finance and telecommunications are turning to cloud-based quantum computing platforms such as IBM Q, Rigetti Computing's Quantum Cloud Service, Microsoft's Azure Quantum, and Amazon Web Services' Braket, but said they face a handful of challenges.
See also: 2020s are the decade of commercial quantum computing, says IBM
"Developing new algorithms for quantum computers isn't the only challenge," Q-CTRL Quantum Professional Services lead Andre Carvalho said. "Users still face many obstacles making them run successfully on cloud hardware."
He said today's cloud quantum computing hardware is far from ideal. He said to make these systems more broadly usable, performance is often constrained and capabilities are limited.
"Peak performance has generally only been accessible to specialist hardware research teams and even then still suffers from errors that have prevented the realisation of 'quantum advantage' -- when quantum computers solve practically relevant problems better or faster than conventional machines," Carvalho added.
The plan for the new Quantum Professional Services team is to assist organisations seeking to "overcome the constraints of today's cloud-based quantum computers to improve algorithmic success".
Q-CTRL earlier this month announced partnering with AI-based navigation hardware firm Advanced Navigation to further work on quantum-enabled sensing.
The two Australian companies have plans to conduct joint technical development in support of both the civilian and defence markets, focusing on quantum-enhanced precision navigation and timing.
Another Australian university spinout, CyAmast, from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), this week announced raising AU$1.3 million to fund the venture based on its technology that protects Internet of Things (IoT) devices from cybercrime.
Dr Hassan Habibi and his research team from UNSW's School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications founded CyAmast in May to commercialise the software, which has been touted as protecting large networks of IoT devices from cyber attacks in a scalable, cost-effective way.
CyAmast software continuously monitors network traffic and detects deviations from intended IoT behaviours. Habibi claims that CyAmast's solution is far more flexible, scalable, and cost-effective compared to traditional approaches to determining attacks on IoT systems, which inspect individual "packets" of data to determine threat signatures and then blacklist them.