Short description: US information technology company
IonQ headquarters in College Park, MD
IonQ is a quantum computing hardware and software company based in College Park, Maryland. They are developing a general-purpose trapped ion quantum computer and software to generate, optimize, and execute quantum circuits.
History
IonQ was co-founded by Christopher Monroe and Jungsang Kim, professors at the University of Maryland[1] and Duke University,[2] respectively, in 2015,[3] with the help of Harry Weller and Andrew Schoen, partners at venture firm New Enterprise Associates.[4]
The company is an offshoot of the co-founders’ 25 years of academic research in quantum information science.[3] Monroe's quantum computing research began as a Staff Researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with Nobel-laureate physicist David Wineland[5] where he led a team using trapped ions to produce the first controllable qubits and the first controllable quantum logic gate,[6] culminating in a proposed architecture for a large-scale trapped ion computer.[7]
Kim and Monroe began collaborating formally as a result of larger research initiatives funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA).[8] They wrote a review paper[8] for Science Magazine entitled Scaling the Ion Trap Quantum Processor,[9] pairing Monroe's research in trapped ions with Kim’s focus on scalable quantum information processing and quantum communication hardware.[10]
This research partnership became the seed for IonQ’s founding. In 2015, New Enterprise Associates invested $2 million to commercialize the technology Monroe and Kim proposed in their Science paper.[4]
In 2016, they brought on David Moehring from IARPA—where he was in charge of several quantum computing initiatives[11]—to be the company’s chief executive.[3] In 2017, they raised a $20 million series B, led by GV (formerly Google Ventures) and New Enterprise Associates, the first investment GV has made in quantum computing technology.[12] They began hiring in earnest in 2017,[13] with the intent to bring an offering to market by late 2018.[3][14]
In May 2019, former Amazon Prime executive Peter Chapman was named new CEO of the company.[15] IonQ then partnered to make its quantum computers available to the public through Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.[16][17][18]
In October 2021, IonQ became publicly listed on the New York Stock Exchange via a special-purpose acquisition company.[19][20]
Technology
IonQ’s hardware is based on a trapped ion architecture, from technology that Monroe developed at the University of Maryland, and that Kim developed at Duke.[12]
In November 2017, IonQ presented a paper at the IEEE International Conference on Rebooting Computing describing their technology strategy and current progress. It outlines using a microfabricated ion trap and several optical and acousto-optical systems to cool, initialize, and calculate. They also describe a cloud API, custom language bindings, and quantum computing simulators that take advantage of their trapped ion system's complete connectivity[21]
IonQ and some experts claim that trapped ions could provide a number of benefits over other physical qubit types in several measures, such as accuracy, scalability, predictability, and coherence time.[22][3][23] Others criticize the slow operational times and relative size of trapped ion hardware, claiming other qubit technologies are just as promising.[22]
References
- ↑ Sickles, Kate. "Monroe, Christopher - UMD Physics". https://www.umdphysics.umd.edu/people/faculty/current/item/348-monroe.html.
- ↑ "Jungsang Kim - Department of Physics". https://phy.duke.edu/people/jungsang-kim.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Castellanos, Sara (26 July 2017). "Venture Firms Back Startup with Novel Twist on Quantum Computing". Wall Street Journal. https://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2017/07/26/startups-trapped-ions-could-lead-to-better-quantum-performance/.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Gregg, Aaron (1 January 2017). "Start-up IonQ sees opportunity in still-developing area of quantum computers". https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/as-quantum-physicists-work-to-re-make-the-world-of-computing-investors-see-an-opportunity/2017/01/01/04b6776e-cdef-11e6-a87f-b917067331bb_story.html.
- ↑ Popkin, Gabriel (1 December 2016). "Scientists are close to building a quantum computer that can beat a conventional one". Science. doi:10.1126/science.aal0442.
- ↑ "Quantum Computing with Ions [Re-Post"]. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quantum-computing-with-ions/.
- ↑ Kielpinski, D.; Monroe, C.; Wineland, D. J. (June 2002). "Architecture for a large-scale ion-trap quantum computer". Nature 417 (6890): 709–711. doi:10.1038/nature00784. PMID 12066177. Bibcode: 2002Natur.417..709K.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 "The future of ion traps". 7 March 2013. https://www.rdmag.com/news/2013/03/future-ion-traps.
- ↑ Monroe, C.; Kim, J. (7 March 2013). "Scaling the Ion Trap Quantum Processor". Science 339 (6124): 1164–1169. doi:10.1126/science.1231298. PMID 23471398. Bibcode: 2013Sci...339.1164M.
- ↑ "Welcome to Prof. Jungsang Kim's MIST Research Group - Multifunctional Integrated Systems Technology". http://mist.pratt.duke.edu/.
- ↑ "Quantum Leaps - Trajectory Magazine". 3 August 2016. http://trajectorymagazine.com/quantum-leaps/.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 IonQ. "IonQ Raises $20M Series B Round Led By NEA, GV To Advance Quantum Computing For Commercial Applications". https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ionq-raises-20m-series-b-round-led-by-nea-gv-to-advance-quantum-computing-for-commercial-applications-300494456.html.
- ↑ Castelvecchi, Davide (3 January 2017). "Quantum computers ready to leap out of the lab in 2017". Nature 541 (7635): 9–10. doi:10.1038/541009a. PMID 28054624. Bibcode: 2017Natur.541....9C.
- ↑ BlueYard Capital (8 September 2017). "Building a Quantum Computer: David Moehring, IonQ". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vr0590Utbt8.
- ↑ Hacket, Robert (21 May 2019). "Amazon Prime Boss Named CEO of Google-Backed Quantum Computing Startup". https://fortune.com/2019/05/21/amazon-prime-google-quantum-computing-startup-ceo/. Retrieved 19 February 2020.
- ↑ Castellanos, Sara (13 August 2020). "Amazon's Cloud Unit to Offer Quantum Computing From 3 Tech Companies". https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-cloud-unit-to-offer-quantum-computing-from-3-tech-companies-11597348500. Retrieved 11 March 2021.
- ↑ Lardinois, Frederic (1 February 2021). "Microsoft's Azure Quantum platform is now in public preview". https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/01/microsofts-azure-quantum-platform-is-now-in-public-preview/. Retrieved 11 March 2021.
- ↑ Kissell, Kevin (17 June 2021). "Expanding access to quantum today for a better tomorrow". https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/ionq-quantum-computer-available-through-google-cloud.
- ↑ Castellanos, Sara (8 March 2021). "Quantum-Computing Startup IonQ Plans Public Debut in $2 Billion SPAC Merger". https://www.wsj.com/articles/quantum-computing-startup-ionq-plans-public-debut-in-2-billion-spac-merger-11615201201. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
- ↑ "IonQ Becomes First Publicly Traded, Pure-Play Quantum Computing Company; Closes Business Combination with dMY Technology Group III". 1 October 2021. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ionq-becomes-first-publicly-traded-120000782.html. Retrieved 13 October 2021.
- ↑ Reconfigurable and Programmable Ion Trap Quantum Computer - IEEE Conference Publication. doi:10.1109/ICRC.2017.8123665.
- ↑ 22.0 22.1 Monroe, Christopher R.; Schoelkopf, Robert J.; Lukin, Mikhail D. (19 April 2016). "Quantum Connections". Scientific American 314 (5): 50–57. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0516-50. PMID 27100255. Bibcode: 2016SciAm.314e..50M.
- ↑ Emerging Technology from the arXiv. "The Long-Awaited Promise of a Programmable Quantum Computer". https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601099/the-long-awaited-promise-of-a-programmable-quantum-computer/.
External links
| Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IonQ. Read more |