Tech giants like Google and IBM have already marked their presence in the domain of quantum computing. These companies have been working on quantum computing for quite a few years now and have created a lot of buzz in this field.
At the beginning of this year, IBM has unveiled its first-ever circuit-based commercial quantum computer known as IBM Q System One at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The company has also announced to open its first IBM Q Quantum Computation centre for commercial clients in New York.
Recently, Google has also made a breakthrough by announcing that the company has achieved quantum supremacy. The researchers published a scientific journal where they discussed the efforts and techniques to build a quantum computer which has the ability to perform tasks which no other classical computer can do.
On the other hand, instead of creating a buzz around the next big thing, e-commerce giant, Amazon has silently placed its cards on the table. Understanding the potential to solve computational problems that are beyond the reach of classical computers by harnessing the laws of quantum mechanics to build more powerful tools for processing information, the cloud computing platform of this e-comm giant joined hands with D-Wave, IonQ and Rigetti and unveiled its all-new quantum computing service known as Braket.
A few days ago, AWS officially announced the preview launch of Braket, its first-ever quantum computing service. The term Braket is derived from “bra–ket notation” which is a common notation for quantum states in quantum mechanics.
Amazon’s Braket is a fully managed service that helps to get started with quantum computing by providing a development environment to explore and design quantum algorithms, test them on simulated quantum computers, and run them on the choice of different quantum hardware technologies.
How Braket Helps
Gaining access to quantum computing hardware to run the algorithms and optimise designs can be expensive and inconvenient. Also, programming quantum computers to solve a problem requires a new set of skills. Amazon Braket helps in overcoming these difficulties by providing a service that lets developers, researchers, and scientists explore, evaluate, and experiment with quantum computing.
This service allows users to choose from a variety of quantum computers which include gate based superconductor computers from Rigetti, quantum annealing superconductor computers from D-Wave, and ion trap computers from IonQ. Braket also allows users to design their own quantum algorithms from scratch or to choose from a set of pre-built algorithms. Once the algorithm gets defined, Amazon Braket provides a fully managed simulation service to help in troubleshooting and verifying the implementation. A user can then run the algorithm on any of the above-mentioned quantum computers.
Furthermore, in order to make it easier for the users to develop a hybrid algorithm which is a combination of both classical and quantum tasks, Amazon Braket helps in managing classical compute resources and establish low-latency connections to the quantum hardware.
Quantum Computing In India
Currently, in India, a lot of things are going around in the domain of quantum computing, with the government and private organisations both simultaneously trying to make advancements in this field.
Recently, C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), a national premier R&D organisation under Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, and Atos — a noted digital transformation company, has announced their Cooperation Agreement for technology advancement in the areas of quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and exascale computing.
Also, a few months ago, the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IIT Roorkee) has also partnered with Microsoft Garage India and introduced a full semester elective course on quantum computing. The course will provide access to Q# Programming Language practical examples, Microsoft Quantum Development Kit, and Microsoft Quantum Faculty.
