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September 13, 2024 0

The Latest Quantum Computing & Cryptography News Round Up [September 2024 Edition]

in Beyond Hashed Out, Industry Lowdown

Get the highlights of the latest PQC updates and quantum computing-related news and breakthroughs from around the industry

Want to stay abreast of the latest quantum computing news and developments but don’t have time to dive into the research? We’ve got your quantum computing and cryptography news round-up that covers what you want to know about both topics in one place.

Let’s hash it out.

The Latest Quantum Computing News and Developments

Microsoft and Quantinuum Researchers Triple Logical Qubits That Demonstrate High Fidelity

Pairing Microsoft’s Azure Quantum virtualization system with Quantinuum’s trapped-ion quantum computers, researchers were able to create a dozen “highly reliable” logical qubits that exhibited low error rates. (This is three times the number of logical qubits they achieved previously in research I shared in an article earlier this year.)

These logical qubits, which are a collection of more error-prone physical qubits, were entangled in a way that gave them an error rate “22 times better” than the corresponding physical qubits. (To learn more about quantum error rate correction, be sure to check out the video included at the end of the article.)

Researchers used a modified fault-tolerance scheme (what they refer to as a “tesseract” color code) in combination with computation to prepare “high-fidelity encoded graph states” on the 12 logical qubits. The result? According to Microsoft, it was thought to be the “first demonstration of computation and error correction being beneficially combined” in such a way as to reduce logical error rates and, ideally, lead to fault-tolerant quantum computing capabilities in the future.

Read more about the duo’s research on Microsoft’s blog or in the September 2024 research paper published on ArXiv.

Google Researchers Use Quantum Memory System to Improve Error Correction Rates

Research from Google Quantum AI shows promise for the development of fault-tolerant quantum computing. Pairing “surface code” (i.e., a variation of a quantum error correction code) with two superconducting processors and two high-accuracy decoders, the team of researchers reduced logical qubit error rates to well below the critical noise (i.e., error) threshold.

According to the research: “Each time the code distance increases by two, the logical error per cycle is reduced by more than half[.]” The thought here is that logical qubit noise suppression on a larger scale might be possible using code distance and larger processors.

Researchers acknowledge that there’s still a long road ahead to achieving the necessary processing performance requirements for a practical quantum computer: “With below threshold surface codes, we have demonstrated processor performance that can scale in principle, but which we must now scale in practice.”  

Read more about the team’s research in the August 2024 research paper published on ArXiv.

Australian Researchers Demonstrate 99+% Error Correction Fidelity Using Transistor-Like Quantum Systems

Researchers from the quantum startup Diraq and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) teamed up to use silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor-based (SiMOS-based) spin qubits to carry out two-qubit gate operations. (Gates = operations that alter a qubit’s state, for example, by flipping it or creating a superposition state.)

This approach using MOS-based qubits differs from the quantum computing hardware used by many others, such as Google, which uses superconducting qubits, and Microsoft, which focuses its research efforts on developing topological qubits.

UNSW and Diraq’s research shows a “consistent and repeatable operation with above 99% fidelity of two-qubit gates” — and it’s thought to be the first example of a SiMOS platform achieving this benchmark. In their article, the researchers express encouragement regarding the potential scalability of “silicon spin-based qubits into full-scale quantum processors.”

Read more about it in their August 2024 paper that was published in Nature.

Alright, that’s it for the quantum computing news and updates. Let’s switch gears to take a look at what’s happening in quantum cryptography news…

The Latest Quantum Cryptography News and Updates

In Case You Missed It: NIST Published Its 3 Finalized (and Long-Awaited) PQC Standards 

Last month, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released the latest cryptographic algorithms that are geared to help public and private sector organizations prepare for the eventual arrival of cryptographically relevant quantum computers (CRQCs). The standardized cryptographic schemes include:

• ML-KEM (formerly known as CRYSTALS-Kyber), a lattice-based key encapsulation mechanism
• ML-DSA (formerly Dilithium), lattice-based digital signature algorithm
• SLH-DSA (formerly known as SPHINCS+), a stateless hash-based signature algorithm.

While the goal is for these algorithms to eventually replace modern public key cryptographic schemes, organizations should take a “hybrid PQC” approach in the meantime, using a combination of classical public key and PQC algorithms to prevent HNDL attacks.

Of course, it’s important to note that the algorithms specified in these standards should only be used for internal purposes (i.e., as part of your private PKI). This is because implementing PQC algorithms on the Internet is still considered a long way off. 

Read more about these PQC standards in our recent blog post.

Microsoft Begins Integrating Quantum Algorithms in Its Crypto Library

More recently, Microsoft announced its new support of two cryptographic algorithms in SymCrypt, its open-source core crypto library. The first is ML-KEM, one of the recently standardized PQC algorithms NIST published last month, and the other is the NIST-recommended eXtended Merkle Signature Scheme (XMSS), which is a hashed-based DSA.

In the announcement, the tech giant indicated its plans to incorporate additional PQC algorithms “in the coming months[.]” Those additional algorithms include the recently standardized ML-DSA digital signature and SLA-DSA hashing schemes from NIST mentioned a little earlier.

Check out Microsoft’s Sept. 9 announcement (linked in the first paragraph) to learn more about the upcoming changes.

Want to Learn More About Quantum Error Rate Correction?

One of the biggest challenges facing quantum computing developments is that the more researchers try to scale the technologies, the more prone they are to errors. This is where quantum error correction comes in. Check out this explainer video from Google Quantum AI that better explains the concept of error correction and why it’s crucial to quantum computing capabilities:

Alright, that wraps up our quick-hit list of quantum computing news and cryptography updates. Be sure to check back with us to stay informed about new quantum cryptography developments from around the industry.

• #Quantum Computing News
• #Quantum Cryptography News