Toronto-based Xanadu has crossed a milestone in the race to develop a quantum computer that can solve significant business and technological problems. In a paper published today in the science journal Nature, the startup lays out how its Borealis machine could solve in fractions of a second “a particular esoteric math problem” that would take the world’s fastest supercomputer thousands of years.
Here’s what the breakthrough means for the company and Canada, in the words of Xanadu founder and CEO Christian Weedbrook.
The technology: “You’ve got a new type of computer leveraging not our traditional classical laws [of physics] but of quantum physics to speed up certain tasks,” Weedbrook explained. The challenge Borealis solved is “not a business problem—it’s problems of an esoteric math nature. But it’s still a good thing, because you want to show that it’s actually, in principle, possible to outperform classical computers.
“In our case, the demonstration had a number of technology breakthroughs that allow us to get to fault tolerance, [which is] a million qubits, and more importantly, starting to solve customers’ business problems.”
The company: This is the third time a machine has achieved “quantum computational advantage,” meaning it’s outperformed the fastest current conventional supercomputer on a particular task. Google claimed it in a paper published in October 2019, as did a team from University of Science and Technology of China in December 2020. “In those two previous demonstrations, this most-powerful computer that’s demonstrated has never been available for the average user on the cloud,” said Weedbrook.
On Wednesday, Xanadu announced it’s hooking Borealis up to its own cloud service and Amazon Braket. The company and its competitors are currently more focused on developing quantum hardware than generating revenue, according to Weedbrook. But it’s building out a user base that could turn into major clients once its fault-tolerant computer is ready.
“The main people using this now are researchers [and] government institutions. The third [group is] large, multinational corporations that understand they need to start understanding now how to actually use these things—where their largest computational challenges are, and mapping that to quantum computing.
“We have this thought experiment: let’s assume a fault-tolerant, one-million qubit quantum computer exists today at a pharma company or a battery company. They wouldn’t really know how to use it. It’s not like taking out the latest GPU [chip] and putting in the new one, where they just do the same thing.
“Xanadu is a world leader in using quantum computing to help inform the next generation of battery development. How do you create the next generation of batteries that are more efficient, store more charge? We want to work with customers closely to have a share in the IP and the rights once these new materials are actually developed.”
The country: “This is the first time that” quantum computational advantage “has ever been demonstrated in Canada,” said Weedbrook. “For a particular esoteric math problem, this is the most powerful quantum computer on Earth.”
“The Canadian government has put probably billions of dollars over the last two decades” into quantum technology development. “I’m from Australia, originally. Since I’ve come to Canada, I hear the same thing as in Australia: there’s a brain drain. So I think it’s a great moment that the talent that has achieved this … has done it in our backyard.”
