AQT quantum computers now supported by HQS Quantum Simulations backend

June 2020: AQT and Xanadu are pleased to announce that PennyLane, an open-source project from Xanadu for quantum machine learning, automatic differentiation, and optimization, now supports AQT quantum computers.

The power of machine learning is being increasingly applied throughout industry; from lower costs or faster shipping of a product, to reduced power consumption and improved sustainability — machine learning can optimize virtually any process in industry. Quantum computers promise to find better solutions faster than classical computers. Xanadu develops software for quantum machine learning (QML) and optimization. PennyLane, one of Xanadu’s core software products, is an easy to use open-source platform for QML — optimizing processes in industry today.

“PennyLane supports a wide range of quantum hardware and machine learning libraries and we are pleased to add AQT’s quantum computers to the ecosystem”, says Nathan Killoran, Head of Software and Algorithms at Xanadu. “While the community is still working towards fault-tolerant quantum computing, PennyLane and hardware offerings such as those by AQT, allow enterprise clients to start leveraging quantum computing today”.

AQT is a leading start-up in the race to build a quantum computer. Located in Innsbruck, Austria, and a spin-off from the Innsbruck University and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, AQT realizes quantum computers based on the individual manipulation of trapped charged atoms. The ion-trap platform has intrinsically low error rates and can be readily scaled up to larger systems.

AQT provides cloud-access to its quantum computer for a wide range of applications.  “Quantum computers can outperform classical computers on numerous applications. The challenge is to merge end-user applications with quantum programming and hardware capabilities”, says Thomas Monz, CEO of AQT. “Combining the software experience of Xanadu with the hardware and engineering expertise of AQT will significantly facilitate user- and application-driven progress in this field”.

The semiconductor industry was the first quantum revolution — spanning from transistors to lasers — and dominated the 20th century. Quantum technologies, the second quantum revolution, are set to dominate the industry in the 21st century. More and more companies recognize that they need to accelerate the development of digital solutions to ensure they remain on the competitive forefront.

One of the greatest challenges in the development of quantum applications is to bring both software and hardware together — the deep understanding on how to program with the novel rules of quantum mechanics, and to combine this knowledge with hardware that is reliant on the visions of a growing number of quantum researchers in academia and industry. Two start-ups, each a pioneer in its field; Xanadu, leading the fields of photonic quantum hardware and quantum machine learning and AQT, one of the top quantum computing hardware providers, can together offer a broad range of innovative applications in various fields ranging from chemistry to machine learning.

Located in the heart of downtown Toronto, Canada, Xanadu has brought together exceptional minds from around the world to build quantum computers that are useful and available to people everywhere. In addition to building cloud-accessible photonic quantum computers, Xanadu is focused on the advancement of quantum machine learning and the development of quantum algorithms.

© Photocredits: Dieter Kühl