 | |
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| NYSE: IONQ | |
| Industry | Quantum computing |
| Founders | Christopher Monroe, Jungsang Kim |
| Headquarters | College Park, Maryland |
Key people | Peter Chapman (President and CEO) |
| Products | Trapped ion quantum computation |
| Website | ionq |
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.
IonQ was co-founded by Christopher Monroe and Jungsang Kim, professors at Duke University, [1] in 2015, [2] with the help of Harry Weller and Andrew Schoen, partners at venture firm New Enterprise Associates. [3]
The company is an offshoot of the co-founders’ 25 years of academic research in quantum information science. [2] 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 [4] where he led a team using trapped ions to produce the first controllable qubits and the first controllable quantum logic gate, [5] culminating in a proposed architecture for a large-scale trapped ion computer. [6]
Kim and Monroe began collaborating formally as a result of larger research initiatives funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). [7] They wrote a review paper [7] for Science Magazine entitled Scaling the Ion Trap Quantum Processor, [8] pairing Monroe's research in trapped ions with Kim’s focus on scalable quantum information processing and quantum communication hardware. [9]
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. [3]
In 2016, they brought on David Moehring from IARPA—where he was in charge of several quantum computing initiatives [10] [3] —to be the company’s chief executive. [2] 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. [11] They began hiring in earnest in 2017, [12] with the intent to bring an offering to market by late 2018. [2] [13] In May 2019, former Amazon Prime executive Peter Chapman was named new CEO of the company. [14] [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] The company opened a dedicated research and development facility in Bothell, Washington, in February 2024, touting it as the first quantum computing factory in the United States. [21]
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. [22] [11]
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 [23]
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. [24] [2] [25] Others criticize the slow operational times and relative size of trapped ion hardware, claiming other qubit technologies are just as promising. [24]
Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, engineering, mathematical, technological, and social aspects. Major computing disciplines include computer engineering, computer science, cybersecurity, data science, information systems, information technology, and software engineering.
A quantum computer is a computer that exploits quantum mechanical phenomena. On small scales, physical matter exhibits properties of both particles and waves, and quantum computing leverages this behavior using specialized hardware. Classical physics cannot explain the operation of these quantum devices, and a scalable quantum computer could perform some calculations exponentially faster than any modern "classical" computer. In particular, a large-scale quantum computer could break widely used encryption schemes and aid physicists in performing physical simulations; however, the current state of the art is largely experimental and impractical, with several obstacles to useful applications.
In quantum computing, a qubit or quantum bit is a basic unit of quantum information—the quantum version of the classic binary bit physically realized with a two-state device. A qubit is a two-state quantum-mechanical system, one of the simplest quantum systems displaying the peculiarity of quantum mechanics. Examples include the spin of the electron in which the two levels can be taken as spin up and spin down; or the polarization of a single photon in which the two spin states can also be measured as horizontal and vertical linear polarization. In a classical system, a bit would have to be in one state or the other. However, quantum mechanics allows the qubit to be in a coherent superposition of multiple states simultaneously, a property that is fundamental to quantum mechanics and quantum computing.
This is a timeline of quantum computing.
In logic circuits, the Toffoli gate, also known as the CCNOT gate (“controlled-controlled-not”), invented by Tommaso Toffoli, is a CNOT gate with two control qubits and one target qubit. That is, the target qubit will be inverted if the first and second qubits are both 1. It is a universal reversible logic gate, which means that any classical reversible circuit can be constructed from Toffoli gates.
A trapped-ion quantum computer is one proposed approach to a large-scale quantum computer. Ions, or charged atomic particles, can be confined and suspended in free space using electromagnetic fields. Qubits are stored in stable electronic states of each ion, and quantum information can be transferred through the collective quantized motion of the ions in a shared trap. Lasers are applied to induce coupling between the qubit states or coupling between the internal qubit states and the external motional states.
Quantum networks form an important element of quantum computing and quantum communication systems. Quantum networks facilitate the transmission of information in the form of quantum bits, also called qubits, between physically separated quantum processors. A quantum processor is a machine able to perform quantum circuits on a certain number of qubits. Quantum networks work in a similar way to classical networks. The main difference is that quantum networking, like quantum computing, is better at solving certain problems, such as modeling quantum systems.
D-Wave Quantum Systems Inc. is a quantum computing company with locations in Palo Alto, California and Burnaby, British Columbia. D-Wave claims to be the world's first company to sell computers that exploit quantum effects in their operation. D-Wave's early customers include Lockheed Martin, the University of Southern California, Google/NASA, and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
A quantum bus is a device which can be used to store or transfer information between independent qubits in a quantum computer, or combine two qubits into a superposition. It is the quantum analog of a classical bus.
Quantum simulators permit the study of a quantum system in a programmable fashion. In this instance, simulators are special purpose devices designed to provide insight about specific physics problems. Quantum simulators may be contrasted with generally programmable "digital" quantum computers, which would be capable of solving a wider class of quantum problems.
Christopher Roy Monroe is an American physicist and engineer in the areas of atomic, molecular, and optical physics and quantum information science, especially quantum computing. He directs one of the leading research and development efforts in ion trap quantum computing. Monroe is the Gilhuly Family Presidential Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at Duke University and is College Park Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland and Fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute and Joint Center for Quantum Computer Science. He is also co-founder of IonQ, Inc.
Quantum machine learning is the integration of quantum algorithms within machine learning programs.
IBM Quantum Platform is an online platform allowing public and premium access to cloud-based quantum computing services provided by IBM. This includes access to a set of IBM's prototype quantum processors, a set of tutorials on quantum computation, and access to an interactive textbook. As of February 2021, there are over 20 devices on the service, six of which are freely available for the public. This service can be used to run algorithms and experiments, and explore tutorials and simulations around what might be possible with quantum computing.
Cloud-based quantum computing is the invocation of quantum emulators, simulators or processors through the cloud. Increasingly, cloud services are being looked on as the method for providing access to quantum processing. Quantum computers achieve their massive computing power by initiating quantum physics into processing power and when users are allowed access to these quantum-powered computers through the internet it is known as quantum computing within the cloud.
In quantum computing, a qubit is a unit of information analogous to a bit in classical computing, but it is affected by quantum mechanical properties such as superposition and entanglement which allow qubits to be in some ways more powerful than classical bits for some tasks. Qubits are used in quantum circuits and quantum algorithms composed of quantum logic gates to solve computational problems, where they are used for input/output and intermediate computations.
Quantum volume is a metric that measures the capabilities and error rates of a quantum computer. It expresses the maximum size of square quantum circuits that can be implemented successfully by the computer. The form of the circuits is independent from the quantum computer architecture, but compiler can transform and optimize it to take advantage of the computer's features. Thus, quantum volumes for different architectures can be compared.
Simon John Devitt is an Australian theoretical quantum physicist who has worked on large-scale Quantum computing architectures, Quantum network systems design, Quantum programming development and Quantum error correction. In 2022 he was appointed as a member to Australia's National Quantum Advisory Committee.
Michael J. Biercuk is Professor of Quantum Physics and Quantum technology at the University of Sydney, and the CEO and Founder of Q-CTRL, a venture-capital-backed quantum technology company. In his academic role he is a Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems.