The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing (US2QC) program is exploring the costs and benefits of accelerating the development and scaling up of quantum computers to head off potential strategic surprise by U.S. adversaries.
The agency has picked three companies for US2QC–Microsoft Corp. [MSFT], Berkeley, Calif.’s Atom Computing, and Palo Alto, Calif.’s PsiQuantum Corp.
“Experts disagree on whether a utility-scale quantum computer based on conventional designs is still decades away or could be achieved much sooner,” Joe Altepeter, DARPA’s US2QC program manager, said in a statement last week.
“The goal of US2QC is to reduce the danger of strategic surprise from underexplored quantum computing systems,” he said. “We put out a call last year saying that if anyone thought they had a truly revolutionary approach to building a useful quantum computer in the near future – less than 10 years – we wanted to hear from them. We offered to collaborate by funding additional experts to join their team and provide rigorous government verification and validation of their proposed solutions to determine its viability. The ultimate outcome of the program is a win-win — for U.S. commercial leadership in this strategically important technology area and for national security to avoid being surprised.”
DARPA said that it chose Microsoft, Atom Computing, and PsiQuantum for their “novel approaches” to qauntum computing. Atom Computing builds “builds highly scalable quantum computers based on large arrays of optically-trapped atoms,” DARPA said. Microsoft is developing an industrial-scale quantum system based on a topological qubit architecture to allow small quantum computers, controlling more than one million qubits, to solve problems quickly, while PsiQuantum is using “silicon-based photonics to create an error-corrected quantum computer based on a lattice-like fabric of photonic qubits,” the agency said.
US2QC is to be a five-year program.
In the initial phase of US2QC, Microsoft, Atom Computing, and PsiQuantum “will each present a design concept describing their plans to create a utility-scale quantum computer,” DARPA said. “This design concept will guide a more rigorous system design focused on all of the components and sub-systems that — once constructed and tested — will show that the utility-scale quantum computer can be built as designed and operated as intended. A DARPA-led test and validation team comprising experts from government laboratories and federally funded research and development centers will evaluate the concepts.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin created DoD’s Office of Strategic Capital (OSC) on Dec. 1 to aid companies developing vital DoD technologies, including quantum computing, in receiving private capital to move such technologies into production (Defense Daily, Dec. 1, 2022).
The types of technologies that typically require long-term financing to bridge the “Valley of Death” between the lab and production include quantum science, advanced materials, and next-generation biotechnology, the Pentagon has said.