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Microsoft today harbinger that it has worked with the U.S. Department of Energy ’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory ( PNNL ) to use its Azure Quantum Elements help to whittle down millions of possible new battery materials to only a few — with one of them now in the prototype stage .
Now , before you get too excited about the “ quantum ” part of “ Azure Quantum Elements ” ( and why would n’t you — it ’s in the name , after all ) , permit ’s get this out of the way of life first : No quantum reckoner was used in this labor . Azure Quantum Elements , which launch last summer , combines AI and traditional high-pitched - carrying into action computing ( HPC ) techniques into what is essentially a workbench for scientific computing , with the promise of providing access to Microsoft ’s quantum supercomputer in the time to come . So even though no qubits were involved in this current labor , the overall idea here is to fetch all of these technology together over prison term .
Krysta Svore , who lead Microsoft Quantum , told me that the overall idea here was to see how far the squad could push what is presently available in Azure Quantum Elements ( AQE ) — and peculiarly the AI accelerator — to advance materials discovery . Using AQE , the researchers at PNNL looked at 32 million inorganic textile to go far at 18 candidates for their battery project . First , the teams used AQE ’s AI mannikin to whittle down the consortium to about 500,000 candidates . After that , the investigator used existing HPC techniques to identify those 18 bright candidates to focus on . Typically , it would take yr to go through this process and to work up a prototype battery . Using AQE , the researchers were capable to do this in 18 months .
“ The intersection of AI , cloud and high - public presentation calculation , along with human scientists , we consider is key to accelerating the path to meaningful scientific result , ” allege Tony Peurrung , PNNL deputy director for Science and Technology . “ Our quislingism with Microsoft is about making AI accessible to scientist . We see the potential difference for AI to rise a material or an approach that is unexpected or unconventional , yet worth investigating . This is a first dance step in what foretell to be an interesting journey to speed the pace of scientific discovery . ”
Many quantum computing boosters expect that their simple machine will excel at solving chemistry and fabric scientific discipline problem . And while the quantum computing community continues to tug the state of the artwork forward at a steady pace , we ’re still at least a few years away from seeing a quantum computer that is in reality useful . We ’re presently still in the noisy intermediate - scale quantum ( NISQ ) era , after all . Svore , unsurprisingly , stay on affirmative that Microsoft will be capable to deliver on its plan to build a quantum supercomputer that uses itsMajorana - based qubits , within the next tenner .
For now , though , even though there is obviously material science involved , it ’s heavy not to look at this as a turn of a Porto Rico exercise , given how far we are still from bringing quantum computer science into the process .
Microsoft expects to progress a quantum supercomputer within 10 geezerhood
