Five quantum computing companies, three universities and one national physical laboratory in the UK have come together in a £10 million ($13 million) new project, with an ambitious goal: to spend the next three years trying to make quantum technologies work for businesses.
Called Discovery, the program is partly funded by the UK government and has been pitched as the largest industry-led quantum computing project in the country to date. The participating organizations will dedicate themselves to making quantum technologies that are commercially viable, marking a shift from academic research to implementations that are relevant to, and scalable for businesses.
The Discovery program will focus on photonic quantum computing, which is based on the manipulation of particles of light – a branch of the field that has shown great promise but is still facing large technological barriers.
On the other hand, major players like IBM and Google are both developing quantum computers based on superconducting qubits made of electrons, which are particles of matter. The superconducting qubits found in those quantum devices are notoriously unstable, and require very cold temperatures to function, meaning that it is hard to increase the size of the computer without losing control of the qubits.
Photonic quantum computers, on the contrary, are less subject to interference in their environment, and would be much more practical[1] to use and scale up. The field, however, is still in its infancy. For example, engineers are still working on ways to create the single quantum photons that are necessary for photonic quantum computers to function.
The companies that are a part of the Discovery program will be addressing this type of technical barrier over the next years. They include photonics company M Squared, Oxford Ionics, ORCA Computing, Kelvin Nanotechnology and TMD Technologies.
"The Discovery project will