software
Europe’s quantum computer is opening up to companies
The managing director of T-Systems: Adel Al-Saleh. photo
©Oliver Berg/dpa
Development of a quantum supercomputer: With the German-Finnish start-up IQM, a player from Europe is also involved. T-Systems now enables access to IQM quantum systems via the cloud.
In the future, companies and scientific institutions will be able to access systems from the European market leader in the construction of superconducting quantum computers, IQM, via the cloud. The quantum infrastructure of the German-Finnish start-up is offered by T-Systems, the IT service provider from the Telekom Group announced in Bonn.
Quantum computing makes it possible to calculate algorithms that are too complex for today’s computers. This applies, for example, to applications in the fields of encryption, machine learning and artificial intelligence, security and simulation. So far, however, quantum computers can only be developed and operated by a few specialist companies such as IQM. Quantum particles are very sensitive and change their controlled quantum properties at the slightest disturbance.
Against this background, the offer from T-Systems is not aimed at the regular operation of applications. The cloud service should primarily serve to build up know-how. In the future, customers could develop use cases on IQM’s quantum infrastructure and expand their knowledge.
Quantum computers work very differently from binary computers – with so-called qubits. Like a bit in a classic Computer can be a qubit in either 1 or 0 state. However, the qubit has a special property that the classic bit does not have: A qubit can also be in the states 1 and 0 at the same time or in a theoretically infinite number of states in between. As a result, a quantum computer can calculate certain tasks much faster than classic computer systems.
“Customers can access sovereign quantum environment”
Adel Al-Saleh, Managing Director of T-Systems, said quantum technology will play a key role in Europe’s future competitiveness. “Announcing with IQM means our customers can access a truly sovereign quantum environment, built and managed from Europe.”
At the end of June, Microsoft also announced a cloud service that companies can use to prepare for the coming quantum age. However, the software group’s cloud service works on conventional binary computers and merely simulates quantum logic.