Amazon joins supercomputer race with ‘quantum’ service
AMAZON has joined the supercomputer race with a new ‘quantum computing’ service that could help solve complex tasks in minutes or seconds.
The service, Amazon Braket, will see Amazon Web Services (AWS) compete with Google, IBM and Microsoft to seize control over what could be a breakthrough in computer technology.
Quantum computing promises to speed up today’s tasks by hundreds of times.
In October, Google said it had used a quantum computer to solve within minutes a complex problem that would take today’s most powerful supercomputer thousands of years to crack.
As such, the technology is not only of interest to big companies, but to governments and defence-related cybersecurity organisations.
Amazon is promising to make powerful quantum computing services available over the web, in contrast with rivals’ focus on hardware.
To do this, Amazon is partnering with D-Wave, IonQ and Rigetti – companies that will do the heavy lifting on the hardware end, with services channelled through to AWS customers.
“Amazon Braket is a fully managed AWS service, with security and encryption baked in at each level,” said AWS chief evangelist Jeff Barr, announcing the service at the company’s annual Re:Invent conference.
For decades, computer scientists have sought to harness quantum physics, laws governing the behaviour of particles that are smaller than atoms and can simultaneously exist in different states.
Quantum bits, or qubits, can be set to one and zero at the same time, unlike today’s computer bits that are either ones or zeroes.
The more qubits connect, the vastly more powerful a quantum computer becomes.
There is a catch though. Quantum researchers need to cool qubits to about absolute zero (-273C) to limit vibration – or ‘noise’ – that causes errors in calculations.
Amazon hopes to deliver its new services over the web