ColdQuanta Awarded Contract of up to $7.4M from DARPA to Accelerate Development of Scalable Cold Atom Quantum Computers
April 09 2020 - 10:00AM
Business Wire
Company leads the collaboration of prominent
industry, national lab, and academic partners
ColdQuanta, the quantum atomics company, has been selected by
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a
scalable, cold-atom-based quantum computing hardware and software
platform that can demonstrate quantum advantage on real-world
problems. The award is valued at up to $7.4M.
The DARPA award is part of the ONISQ program—Optimization with
Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum devices—aimed at developing
quantum systems that can scale to hundreds or thousands of qubits
with high performance and reliability. The objective is to show
quantum advantage of quantum-hybrid systems over classical systems
for a range of difficult combinatorial optimization problems
including resource allocation, logistics, and image recognition.
ColdQuanta’s Quantum Core™ technology uses lasers to cool atoms to
near absolute zero and can use individual atoms as qubits in a
scalable manner, all without the need for cryogenic
refrigeration.
“We are honored by this award from DARPA and consider it strong
validation of our cold atom quantum architecture and the
extraordinary expertise of our collective team,” said Bo Ewald, CEO
of ColdQuanta. “The ONISQ program will drive the industry forward
and lead to unprecedented quantum computational capabilities for
crucial defense and intelligence applications. Many of these same
optimization problems are also applicable to complex industrial
applications.”
ColdQuanta’s partners in this collaboration are the University
of Wisconsin–Madison, Raytheon Technologies, Argonne National
Laboratory, University of Chicago, NIST Gaithersburg, University of
Colorado Boulder, University of Innsbruck, and Tufts
University.
“We’re thrilled to embark on this program with ColdQuanta and
our partners,” said Mark Saffman, Chief Scientist for Quantum
Information at ColdQuanta and Professor of Physics, University of
Wisconsin–Madison. “The capabilities of the team will enable us to
deliver on all aspects of the ONISQ program—hardware, software,
applications, and benchmarking.”
“Argonne is delighted to collaborate with ColdQuanta and other
partners to use the largest supercomputers in the world to
demonstrate quantum advantage and perform benchmarks,” said Yuri
Alexeev, Principal Project Specialist at Argonne and a Senior
Scientist at the University of Chicago.
ColdQuanta is leading the development of hardware, control
systems, and interface software, and has already begun work on the
project. The partner organizations will supply a range of
components, develop use cases and applications, provide expertise
in quantum computation and quantum simulation, and perform
benchmarking using world-class classical supercomputers.
About ColdQuanta
ColdQuanta leads the market in commercializing quantum atomics,
the next wave of the information age. The company’s Quantum Core™
technology is based on ultra-cold atoms cooled to a temperature of
nearly absolute zero; lasers manipulate and control the atoms with
extreme precision. ColdQuanta manufactures components, instruments,
and turnkey systems that address a broad spectrum of applications:
quantum computing, timekeeping, navigation, radiofrequency sensors,
and quantum communications. ColdQuanta’s global customers include
major commercial and defense companies; all branches of the U.S.
Department of Defense; national labs operated by the Department of
Energy, NASA, and NIST; and major universities. ColdQuanta is based
in Boulder, CO, with offices in Madison, Wisconsin, and Oxford,
UK.
Learn more at www.coldquanta.com.
The name ColdQuanta and the ColdQuanta logo are both registered
trademarks of ColdQuanta, Inc.
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ColdQuanta Press Contact: Rob Williamson 608-213-7255
media@coldquanta.com