Relentless progress continues to pull forward the Q-Day timeline

Google claims another quantum advantage achieving a speedup five orders of magnitude better than classical equivalents, and significant changes to surface code implementations alters the narrative. This week’s bulletin keeps a pulse on a development from the last cycle and addresses the implications of NVIDIA’s new collaboration, bridging the super with the quantum.

Spinning New Developments: Google Acquires Another Quantum Advantage 

If you haven’t heard yet, Google has claimed another quantum advantage over classical computers, roughly 13,000 times faster, using an algorithm called Quantum Echoes. The specific use-case was to process nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spin states to better characterize molecules. Importantly, this means that the current capabilities of quantum computers can have real world applications beyond toy problems and otherwise straightforward computations. An underlying but also crucial component here was the acknowledgement of the open-source community to assist in bridging the gap between hardware and algorithms in larger spin systems. Both the targeted spin size information and algorithmic developments could have a huge impact, opening doors for other applications such as cryptography. 

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Beyond There Be Lattices

If you recall, the last bulletin had mention of a pre-print paper, which has been iteratively edited and expanded upon, that claimed to undermine the security and practical legitimacy of lattice-based encryption. The argument was based around manipulations that prevented the need for amplitude periodicity, an aspect that required more overhead than the claimed improvement to Chen’s original algorithm. However, as many papers are subject to, scrutiny was bound to challenge the claims the paper purported. 

While there were different appraisals of the claims made, the consensus is that there are still fundamental challenges to undermining lattice-based encryption both algorithmically and practically, for now. A key dissenter to the claims of this pre-print rebutted on the grounds of misattribution of fundamental quantum mechanics concepts and incongruencies regarding required a priori information of crucial variables that may rely on negligibly likely probability. Regardless, the pursuit, and respective scrutiny of said pursuits, remains active to leverage quantum computing to break lattice-based and other encryption methods by bridging theory and practical implementation. Effectively, lattice-based encryption still remains a solid option to thwart cryptographical attacks from quantum computers.

Breaking the Surface (Codes):

Alongside hardware advancements, improvements in algorithmic handling of error have changed the landscape once again. A group of researchers have furthered the capabilities of quantum surface codes to correct physical errors in a recent Nature Physics paper. How they work revolves around treating physical qubits as a 2D lattice and treating it as a local network of nearest neighbors. What is interesting is that these surface codes are able to detect and correct errors with stabilizer measurements, which have been improved as well for space-time dynamics. The importance of this research is that it further bridges hardware and software in being able to attempt practical implementations of quantum computers.

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As seen above in Figure 2b, taken from that same preprint, increasing the distance or size of the 2D lattice can improve logical error probability. However, increasing these surface code distances is a large undertaking as more physical qubits are required as well as sensitive control mechanisms. This is very relevant, since the number of qubits needed to achieve something like ECDLP or RSA encryption breaking may be decreased by an order of magnitude as more robust operation execution over an extended number of cycles occurs in tandem with hardware improvements. 

Collaboration as Causation: How NVIDIA and Quantum are Breaking Ground

NVIDIA recently entered into an agreement to collaborate and equip 17 quantum computing companies and 9 scientific laboratories with supercomputing capabilities. A common misconception is that classical computers will be outright replaced by quantum computers. A more apt consideration may be that quantum computers integrate and augment the capabilities of computers as a whole, just as GPUs did with CPUs. Ironically, NVIDIA started with GPUs to expand what is possible with computing by developing more capabilities in processing, just as they appear to be doing with Quantum Processing Units (QPUs). The point being made here is that quantum computers may not in totality replace classical computers but specific use-cases will be handed to QPUs in lieu of CPUs or GPUs.

Beyond delegation, there is an incredible opportunity to leverage their collaboration to help one another. Modern classical computing is useful not just in the present but additionally in the future as the optimization of features such as noise mitigation, qubit crosstalk, or other issues. This is where CPUs and GPUs can be delegated part of the workload while QPUs could be given optimized, higher quality inputs to maximize output capacity and minimize resources required to make practical applications implementable. A fair conception of this relationship could be paralleled to a modern “three sisters” where the symbiosis of corn, beans, and squash are exchanged for the synergy of CPUs, GPUs, and QPUs, despite the QPU’s relative underdevelopment. 

News of the Week

Cloudflare’s State of the Quantum Cryptographic Union - An extensive point in time appraisal of post-quantum cryptography and its legitimacy regarding timing, complications, and opinions of experts.

The Amerification of Quantum Computing - The United States may be probing increased involvement and investment in quantum computing firms.

The Qey to FIDO2 - How PQC readiness is approaching FIDO2 authentication systems with ML-DSA integration to combat large-scale quantum computing attacks.

Finance Now, Decrypt Never - SEALSQ invests in Wecan to address PQC concerns and prevent harvest now, decrypt later attacks in the financial sector to keep sensitive client information safe.


Until next time,

The Project Eleven Team
[email protected]