Hope everyone's having a restful weekend.... asked myself the question, on a lazy saturday afternoon - why are Quantum start ups partnering with the likes of NVIDIA, while AXE is not.
answer - these quantum companies in the news currently are focusing on forming hybrid back end partnerships with established conventional computing front ends that NVIDIA provides. In many cases the experimental quantum processor end is viewed as an 'accelerator' to classical computing. Helping conventional computers achieve some kind of edge. I am not convinced that there is an edge in every collaboration. When you can achieve a speed up by adding another GPU from NVIDIA... an 'emulation' of quantum functionality, which is a legitimate solution. It's not 'strictly quantum'.
More to the point, the 12CQ, with its pulse-level control, aims to extract high performance out of its hardware. There is an efficiency here that is better than gate-based models of quantum computing. Connecting to a hybrid classical -quantum set up will dilute the advantage. AXE is aiming to design high precision robust quantum hardware and pulse-level control means that it will develop its own software to directly manipulate the qubit states. While IBM's open source QISKIT is a good starting point to model pulse-level algorithms, it's a generic tool. The 12CQ is a uniquely designed and calibrated device with its own qubit characterization. By spending more time getting the hardware configured accurately, AXE gives itself a great opportunity to build QPUs that offer the best advantages of pure quantum computing. It's not going to settle for the hybrid model. It's not going to use generic software. Improved low level control of a quantum device is what I hope AXE will achieve.
AXE Price at posting:
39.5¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
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