Quantum Computing Inc. (QCi), a development stage company, is developing quantum machines for high-performance computing applications based on proprietary photonics technology.
The company is an American company utilizing non-linear quantum optics (optical devices whose output due to quantum effects is exponentially, not linearly, related to inputs) to deliver quantum products for high-performance computing applications. QCi’s products are designed to operate at room temperature and use low pow...
Quantum Computing Inc. (QCi), a development stage company, is developing quantum machines for high-performance computing applications based on proprietary photonics technology.
The company is an American company utilizing non-linear quantum optics (optical devices whose output due to quantum effects is exponentially, not linearly, related to inputs) to deliver quantum products for high-performance computing applications. QCi’s products are designed to operate at room temperature and use low power. The company’s core technology enables the execution of a go-to-market strategy that emphasizes accessibility and affordability as the key selling points.
QCi’s core technology is Entropy Quantum Computing (‘EQC’). EQC is a patent pending methodology that utilizes the environment to drive controlled energy loss in a photonic architecture. Using quantum measurements of single photons as a source of feedback, the energy loss of the system is driven to a ‘ground state solution’ where additional computational iterations no longer change the output. The ground state solution is the optimized result (the answer to the problem posed). This methodology allows for very low power consumption and room temperature operation. Also, due to the nature of the measurement and feedback process, EQC drives non-linear quantum interactions for ‘dense, fully connected’ problem solving. The company anticipates that its core technologies will enable the company to develop and produce multiple generations of quantum machines with increasing computational power, capacity, and speed, as well as the eventual hardware miniaturization to produce optical integrated circuits to replace the discrete components currently used. The company expects these systems to deliver performance advantages over classical computational machines with the long-term goal of solving complex problems more effectively and efficiently with greater scalability and lower power consumption.
In addition to the company’s photonic computing platform, the company has leveraged QCi’s core technology to demonstrate powerful quantum sensing use cases in LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), reservoir computing (a form of neural network that can be used in machine learning applications) and quantum cyber authentication (a method for highly secure communication within a network). Several of these important technologies are already in early stages of commercialization.
The company’s longer-term product development plan is to migrate product designs based on discrete components to a set of optical integrated circuits built on wafers using a crystalline material called lithium niobate (‘Thin Film Lithium Niobate’ or ‘TFLN’). TFLN is an excellent material for design and implementation of optical integrated circuits suitable for the company’s quantum computing and sensing products because it is crystal based and hence can have optical waveguides directly etched into the material. QCi possesses strong domain experience and intellectual property in TFLN design and chip fabrication and has completed initial production of several specialty devices such as electro-optical modulators (‘EOM’s’). The company has begun buildout of a TFLN chip manufacturing facility in a leased space within Arizona State University’s Research Park in Tempe, Arizona. The company’s understanding is that this could be the nation’s first dedicated optical integrated circuit manufacturing facility using TFLN wafers to achieve quantum effects. The company’s plan for the facility is to produce a range of custom lithium niobate chips for use in the company’s own product lines, as well as chips for sale in the commercial market. The company has plans to support this initiative by applying for funding for distinct uses under both the Title 17 Clean Energy Financing Program managed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office and also the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors Act of 2022 (the ‘CHIPS Act’).
Strategy
QCi’s strategy is to provide a range of accessible and affordable quantum machines to commercial and government markets. The company’s proprietary technology is central to the company’s strategy because it enables the company to leverage the advantages of size, weight, power and cost (over competing cryogenic products to drive market adoption and volume of sales.
In addition to cloud-based access to the company’s quantum computers, the company offers on premises installation of its EQC product, rack-mountable and compatible with standard server room infrastructure requiring no need for special cooling, shielding, or power considerations. EQC’s small rack-mountable size and low-energy consumption provides a substantial competitive edge as compared to superconducting, cryogenic quantum systems offered by competitors that are also designed to solve optimization problems.
Products and Products in Development
The company is well-positioned in the marketplace due to its core technology in integrated photonics that allows QCi to offer a suite of quantum machines and solutions to the market today with a robust technology roadmap for the future. The merger with QPhoton has broadened the company’s technology portfolio and enables the company to develop a group of closely related products to EQC, based on the company’s common core photonic technology.
TFLN Optical Chips
TFLN optical integrated circuits (‘TFLN Optical Chips’) will ultimately provide the greatest scalability and performance advantages for quantum information processing, sensing and imaging. The company is developing proprietary chip designs and is completing a dedicated chip fabrication facility to develop and produce TFLN Optical Chips for quantum information processing and other single photon detection and sensing applications.
Quantum Computing
Entropy Quantum Computer
The core of QCi’s hardware offering is the EQC, which leverages the principle of open quantum systems, meaning that the EQC does not need to be isolated from the outside world in order to function. The EQC differs from the more common gate-model architectures by using the entropy in the environment as a useful source of energy rather than as a source of noise. As a result, the EQC can operate in normal server room environments with a high degree of stability. The EQC works by encoding a problem into a photonic signal and then carefully modulating the loss of energy in the system, iterating until the system reaches the ground state (or optimal configuration) solution. The non-linear coupling of an optical feedback loop in the system enables full connectivity among all of the variables of a complex problem.
QCi launched a new EQC device during the first quarter of 2024 (Dirac-3) and plans to release a series of additional EQC products in the coming months and years. This planned evolution of technology and product enhancements will involve improving the size and capacity of the EQC machines, as well as speed, scalability and performance fidelity. The EQC is available both as a cloud-based subscription service, similar to other quantum machines, as well as an affordable on premises solution.
Qatalyst
QCi’s evolution into quantum hardware computing was enabled by the prior creation of its Qatalyst software. The Qatalyst development platform was QCi’s answer to the broader industry’s current approach to quantum software development, which relies on highly trained scientists working with software development kits (‘SDKs’) at the circuit level, instead of a high-level language, which requires deep level quantum expertise to create quantum workflows. Qatalyst is not a tool kit, rather, a complete platform. Qatalyst enables developers to create and execute quantum-ready applications on conventional computers, as well as multiple quantum computers. Users can call upon the same Qatalyst APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) on conventional computers to achieve optimization performance advantages using the company’s cloud-based solution. The company originally designed Qatalyst to facilitate access to multiple quantum processing units, including Rigetti, Oxford Quantum Circuits and IonQ, QuEra, and Xanadu via the Amazon Web Services (‘AWS’) cloud-based Braket service. Qatalyst is now the interface to QCi’s own EQC systems.
Quantum Intelligence (Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning)
Reservoir Computer
Launched in June 2023, the company’s first reservoir computing product is an edge device that is FPGA-based and optimized for recurrent neural network applications. ‘Compute at the edge’ means to process, measure and analyze data locally (at the device) vs. over a network where data must be sent over the internet or through some cloud service. QCi’s Reservoir Computer (‘RC’) is a standalone box that can be plugged into a local computer or server without having to connect over the internet. The RC hardware system’s advantages over the more traditional software approaches to reservoir computing include significantly faster processing speeds, 80% - 95% less energy consumption, portability (size of power bank), affordability, and requiring significantly shorter training time. The RC delivers superior performance in time dependent tasks, such as chaotic time series prediction, unstructured financial model prediction, natural language processing and weather forecasting. Being deployed at a ‘compute at the edge’ device, which provides the advantage of allowing data analysis to occur at the data collection point, reducing latency and dependency on network connections and providing more real-time processing of data. To date, the market for reservoir computing has been limited due to computing cost and technical implementation complexities, which the RC is designed to address. The company anticipates that future generations of the RC will introduce greater speed of performance and scalability. This will enable the RC to participate in the large language model training and other applications. While technology challenges do remain in scaling this technology, this is one of the focus areas for QCi to gain significant share in the artificial intelligence / Machine Learning hardware market.
Remote Sensing
LiDAR Applications
QCi’s Quantum LiDAR uses patented methodologies that leverage the selective use of quantum spatial-temporal modes to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio of weak information signals in a high noise background. This technology advancement allows QCi systems to see through dense fog and provide image fidelity at great distances with very high resolution in difficult environments, such as snow, ice, and water. The practical benefits on payload and signal to noise enhancement can be used to produce LiDAR systems that are greatly enhanced in their ability to measure at improved resolution and distances from aircraft, drones and even satellites.
Quantum Photonic Vibrometer
Launched July 2023, QCi’s Photonic Vibrometer is a proprietary, powerful instrument for remote vibration detection, sensing, and inspection. This device offers significant advancements in sensitivity, speed, and resolution, capable of discerning for the first time, highly obscured and non-line-of-sight objects. The first in the series of the system measures the vibration frequency of a remote target by utilizing fast-gated single photon counting to directly detect returning photons whose wavefunctions are dynamically modulated as they are reflected off the target. By counting photons at a megahertz rate, important properties, such as material composition and mechanical integrity can be determined within seconds, and depending on detection distance, with microwatt to milliwatt optical power. Working at an eye-safe wavelength, the system can accurately characterize the vibration spectra of solid or liquid targets with vibration amplitude as small as 100 nanometers. The system can also remotely sense through obscured media or around corners where there is no line of sight, implying new capabilities in remote sensing, voice recognition, and ex vivo diagnostics.
The company expects subsequent photonic vibrometer versions, under development, to reach significantly greater distances, minimize device footprint and weight, and optimize data gathering in increasingly challenging environmental conditions (for example, underground, underwater and at high altitudes affixed to a drone, plane or space-based platforms).
Imaging
Optical Imaging
By leveraging the ability to count single photons, a key to the EQC, and filter their associated wave functions precisely, the company can obtain optical imaging through otherwise opaque and dense materials. Quantum imaging has the potential to be a powerful supplement to modern reconstructed computerized tomography (CAT Scan) imaging applications, where tissue damage from high energy radiation needs to be avoided. The company has built and is testing a prototype quantum imaging system.
Cybersecurity
Quantum Networks and Quantum Authentication
QCi has developed a system to address one of the major challenges in cybersecurity, authentication of users on a network, which is facilitated by the distribution of ‘private keys’ by a trusted third party. This approach is inherently insecure as keys are bundled and travel with the encrypted data, making it susceptible to harvest-and-decrypt-later vulnerability. QCi has developed a quantum authentication technology and methodology that eliminates the need for trust of third-party involvement in key distribution. The company’s approach uses a combination of a high-powered laser and a patented detection methodology deeply rooted in the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics, resulting in an unbreakable basis for private network communication.
Intellectual Property
Trademarks
The company has one registered trademark, ‘QPhoton,’ and has applied for two additional trademarks, both of which are being used in commerce: QGraph and Qatalyst.
Patents
The company has one granted United States patent.
Exclusive License Agreement
QCi has an exclusive license to seven patents issued to the Stevens Institute of Technology, pursuant to the license agreement dated December 17, 2020 by and among QPhoton and The Trustees of The Stevens Institute of Technology (the ‘Licensor’).
History
Quantum Computing, Inc., a Delaware corporation, was founded in 2001. The company was incorporated in 2018.