AWS Center for Quantum Computing

History

2021: Launch of Quantum Computing Research Center

On October 26, 2021, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) announced that on its basis Amazon is opening a new research center on the territory of the university to develop advanced technology in the field of quantum computing.

Reportedly, a research center called AWS Center for Quantum Computing will open in early November 2021 and will be located in a two-story building in the northeast corner of the Caltech campus, which is described as the university's first building with a corporate partnership. The Washington Post reports that research activities at the AWS Quantum Computing Center will be led by Caltech professors Oscar Painter, is head of quantum equipment and Fernando Brandao, head of quantum algorithms, these two professors, also hold senior positions at AWS.

Amazon launches center for quantum computing research

Amazon has attracted scientists from several universities to support the work of the center. The intellectual property that the research center will create will belong to Amazon. In addition, the company sponsors a number of research projects in Caltech, and the rights to innovation created under these initiatives belong to the university. In some cases, Amazon and Caltech will share intellectual property.

For Amazon, the potential use of quantum computers as a supply chain optimization tool could prove particularly valuable. Finding the most efficient way to transport parcels to customers or between warehouses requires evaluating a huge number of potential routes, as well as many other factors, such as weather conditions, and quantum computers can perfectly cope with this task. Due to the fact that qubits, the digital equivalent of bits, can perform calculations simultaneously, and not one after another, like transistors, which speeds up data processing, but before quantum computers can be used to solve problems such as finding optimal delivery routes for parcels, they need to be scaled.

Now we can solve small problems with quantum computers, but we need to scale up the technology by many orders of magnitude before we can really solve problems with great influence. Transistors in our modern computers have an extremely low error rate, about one error per billion operations, which allows you to perform complex calculations, "explained Professor Caltech and head of the department of quantum equipment AWS Fernando Brandao.

AWS already provides infrastructure for quantum computing through its public cloud. Amazon offers a service called Amazon Braket, which allows organizations to access quantum computers from Rigetti Computing, IonQ and D-Wave Systems, these are three startups using various qubit technologies.^[1]

Notes