-Wave Systems, a renowned Canadian quantum computing firm, reportedly announced a collaboration with NEC Corporation, a renowned Japanese IT and electronics company, to develop hybrid apps and services.
This new system would work on a combination of D-Wave’s quantum systems and NEC’s high-performance computers. The two companies together announced that NEC would make an investment of $10 million in D-Wave. D-Wave has gathered $204 million in funding round before this investment by NEC.
EVP of R&D and Chief Product Officer at D-Wave, Alan Baratz stated that the company has done a lot of business in Japan. Furthermore, the size of this agreement might help push the technology ahead. The company’s partnership with a global leader like NEC is a vital achievement in the quest for quantum applications that are fully commercial. Meanwhile, Alan Baratz would also be taking over as CEO of the company from January 1st, as announced by the company.
D-Wave claimed this deal to be one of the earliest agreements between a quantum supplier and a renowned IT firm with the scale and size of NEC. This agreement involves three major elements. First, D-Wave and NEC would together develop hybrid services that integrate D-Wave’s quantum technology with NEC’s supercomputers and other classical systems.
Both companies expect that by integrating the quantum and classical systems, they would create better performance for a lesser cost than one would get if one tried to do the same computing over a strictly classical system.
Both companies would also work together with NEC consumers to develop applications that would take advantage of this novel hybrid approach. Additionally, NEC would now be an approved reseller of cloud services of D-Wave.
Executive Vice President and CTO at NEC Corporation, Motoo Nishihara stated that NEC, who claims to have showcased the first quantum bit device of the world back in 1999, it all is about searching for new ways to keep developing commercial quantum computing.
Nishihara further added that quantum computing development is crucial for the future of all industries that are tasked with resolving out time’s most complex problems. Better access to quantum computing systems and hybrid applications are what would enable the achievement of actual commercial-grade quantum solutions.
Source credit: https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/10/d-wave-partners-with-nec-to-build-hybrid-hpc-and-quantum-apps/
