Anything You Can Do…
As of yet, quantum computing (QC) has not proved to be a very practical technology. The lack of real-world use cases is one of the criticisms laid upon it. This, however, may one day change when QC reaches what experts in the industry are calling Quantum Advantage. This term refers to a time in the future when quantum computers will be able to compute hundreds or thousands of times faster than the efforts of today’s classical computers. To go beyond that, Quantum Supremacy — coined last year by Google’s Hartmut Neven — alludes to the moment quantum computers can complete calculations that even the more advanced supercomputers cannot.
Quantum Supremacy, unfortunately, is still a long way away.
Thirty-Two Perfect Qubits
News of IonQ’s next-generation quantum computer possessing 32 perfect qubits and low gate errors along with Honeywell’s QC team’s claim they have achieved a Quantum Volume of 128 brings credence to the fact Quantum Advantage might not be very far away after all.
When that happens, many believe QC will start to earn its daily bread— one of the ways predicted it can help us is in machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI).
And one Canadian startup based in Vancouver has already realized this, it seems.
Quantum Data Technologies (QDT), founded in 2017 by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, is a data science services and solutions company with its foundation of advanced data engineering, quantitative analytics and ML ‘utilizing FPGA-based hardware by accessing and optimizing quantum computers’.
“The challenge facing many Machine Learning models is that they can’t keep up with real-time data; this is mostly because they are batch trained. We offer a different solution for truly dynamic modelling and faster decision-making.”
— Quantum Data Technologies
QDT
Whether quantum information science will be a fundamental technology the startup uses going forward is open to debate, yet QDT can see the potential benefits QC can bring to its services in ML and AI.
In an interview with Financial IT some months ago during his visit to a Fintech Connect event, CEO and founder of QDT Chandrasekaran had this to say about the company’s newest product: “So we as QDT are showcasing our product called QUANTUM ML™, which is quantum machine learning. It’s a cloud-based product. It has applications across multiple verticals. […]. Specifically are customers are big buyers of commodities, traders, equity traders, index traders, hedge fund managers — those are the primary buyers of our product.”
CEO Chandrasekaran has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from UC Santa Barbara. Before founding QDT back in 2017, he had a long career in engineering both as a director and general manager, as well as a stint at Antuit.ai as a senior vice president and partner.
“We’re at an exciting point, because the name of our company is Quantum Data Technologies, and we’ve been looking at quantum computing for a long time. We believe we’re on the edge of being able to use quantum computing for a lot of machine learning applications. So, in the next couple of years, we believe this is going to be a step-change in the way ML algorithms are built so we’re actively researching that as well.”
— Financial IT interview with Rajiv Chandrasekaran, CEO of Quantum Data Technologies
Like Chandrasekaran, TQD maintains QC can do a lot for ML. The only question is when and how the two will benefit one another for the common good of mankind.
