AWS Introduces Amazon Braket Hybrid Jobs and also the Upcoming Addition of QuEra and Oxford Quant...

Many of the quantum applications being developed today are actually hybrid classical/quantum solutions where a classical computer works together with a quantum computer to arrive at a solution. Examples of algorithms of this type include QAOA (Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm) and VQE (Variational Quantum Eigensolver). The solutions are typically iterative in nature that require data being sent back and forth hundreds or thousands of times between the two processors as each performs its part of the computation. It can be quite cumbersome and also time consuming for an end user to manage this manually by themselves so Amazon's Braket Braket Hybrid Jobs capability will automate this to make it much easier for the end user as well as reduce the overall execution time for running the program. IBM has also been working on a similar capability to help simplify and streamline the interfaces between the classical and quantum computers. We described some of this in our recent report of the IBM Quantum Summit where they described some of the things they are doing in this area. More details about AWS new capability can be found in a blog post on their website which is available here.

Also, at Amazon's re:Invent Conference Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced that both QuEra and Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC) will be added as additional hardware providers to the AWS Braket service in the coming months. They will join IonQ, Rigetti, and D-Wave who were previously established as hardware providers for this service. The QuEra machine, a 256-qubit quantum simulator, will be the first quantum device based upon Rydberg atom technology that will be available on the cloud. We recently described their technology and a recent funding in a Quantum Computing Report article that you can see here. The OQC system, called Lucy, is an 8 qubit superconducting quantum computer and will be the first European system attached to the AWS Braket system. It will be available to Braket customers in February 2022. You can view a few more details in a blog post available on the OCQ website.

Additional information about these developments can be viewed in the recordings from the Amazon re:Invent conference and we expect to hear even more at the Q2B Conference in Santa Clara, California next week.

November 30, 2021