French quantum company Quandela has made its Canada-based photonic quantum computer available to users of the Quantum Computing Sandbox (QCS), Canada’s national program intended to accelerate quantum adoption across academia and businesses.
The news: Quandela announced on Thursday that it signed an agreement with CMC Microsystems to join the QCS as a cloud-based computing services provider. The QCS is a research and development program that’s part of the Fabrication of Integrated Components for the Internet’s Edge (FABrIC) network, a federally funded innovation network managed by CMC to bolster Canada’s semiconductor and quantum industries.
As part of the QCS, Quandela’s photonic quantum computing capabilities will be available to participating small businesses and researchers. Quandela claims its photonic quantum computer, established in Canada, is the first and only of its kind available on the QCS.
From the source: “As data sovereignty in the digital realm becomes an increasingly important issue given the current global context, we are proud to be the first to include a Canada-based photonic quantum computer [in the QCS]”, Quandela co-founder Valérian Giesz said in a statement. “This will allow their work and data to be entirely hosted on Canadian soil, without having to go through a structure located in another country.”
The context: Other quantum computing cloud service providers in the sandbox include US-based firms like IonQ, Quantinuum, QuEra, and Rigetti Computing, as well as Sherbrooke, Que.-based PINQ, which operates IBM’s superconducting quantum computer.
As part of the QCS, Quandela has agreed to provide companies and organizations with technical and practical assistance on the “high-potential projects” working on the network.
Final thought: Quantum computers can rely on superconducting qubits or photonic qubits; the former exist on physical chips, and the latter transmit information through photons (particles of light). Giesz said algorithms used in certain projects perform better on specific computing architectures, and that integrating Quandela’s photonic computer gives participants more options when researching, prototyping, or otherwise implementing their solutions.
