Contact point for interested companies: www.diplomatic-council.org/quantumleap
DC Chairman Harald A. Summa aims for the pinnacle of computer performance with Quantum Leap
Harald A. Summa once founded the eco Association of the Internet Industry, thereby laying the foundations for the commercial Internet. Today, with over 1,100 members, eco is the largest association of the Internet industry in Europe with activities around the globe. Now the Internet architect, visionary, mastermind and doer has launched a new initiative, this time to help quantum computers achieve a breakthrough. He has chosen the UN think tank Diplomatic Council (DC), with which he has long been associated, as the sponsor for his latest coup. The official name is the "DC Quantum Leap Initiative".
Harald A. Summa explains the motives behind his approach: "Quantum computers will catapult the available computing power forward by a quantum leap, making even today's supercomputers look like toys in comparison. This computer performance, which is still difficult to imagine, will in turn catapult applications such as artificial intelligence or virtual reality into dimensions of performance that are barely conceivable today. With this new initiative, I want to make a contribution to this double catapult. This has been successful with the Internet and will also be successful with quantum computing if we join forces worldwide."
The former eco CEO justifies his optimism with the fact that there is "a huge potential of innovative high-tech companies that are world leaders in quantum computing". It is now important to pool this expertise in a joint initiative to create a new quantum economy. "Now is the right time to go beyond research and development and create the basis for a quantum computing ecosystem," says Harald A. Summa. He explains: "Just as the Internet has left no industry untouched, the effects of quantum computing will be felt everywhere in the economy. It's not about every company buying a quantum computer, but the enormous computing power and applications based on it will be made available via clouds. This future generation of computers will profoundly change a large number of industries."
From the world's largest internet node to the quantum leap
Harald A. Summa was already at the forefront of establishing an internet economy in the early days of the internet. At a time when Internet traffic still flowed almost exclusively via the USA, the tech visionary built the first German Internet exchange point DE-CIX in Frankfurt am Main and led it to its current position as the largest Internet exchange point in the world. "I want to drive a similarly strong stake in the ground for quantum computers," says Harald A. Summa, confident that he will succeed in making a similar quantum leap with the new initiative in the Diplomatic Council.
Companies from many sectors can participate
The initiative is open not only to all companies working directly on quantum computers, but also to companies from application areas that will benefit from the next generation of computers. Harald A. Summa cites artificial intelligence, visualization, augmented and virtual reality, voice and text dialog systems, cybersecurity and data center operators as examples. "All fields in which the enormous performance of quantum computers will play a decisive role in the future are welcome to participate in the initiative," says the tech visionary. Interested companies can register their participation at www.diplomatic-council.org/quantumleap.
Prof. Dr. Sebastian Thrun, who, like Harald A. Summa, is a member of the UN Diplomatic Council think tank, adds: "Computer power that is still difficult to imagine today will play a key role in further developments in many areas, from artificial intelligence to AR/VR data glasses and the metaverse". The German expatriate took over the AI chair at Stanford University at the age of 36. He was the founder and long-standing head of the secret research laboratory Google X. The US magazine Foreign Policy ranks him among the five most influential thinkers in the world.
His authorized biography, published by the Diplomatic Council, includes quantum computers:
Quantum computers are seen as a stepping stone to a whole new dimension of computing power, which is also credited with having an impact on the future performance of AI. In contrast to conventional digital computers, quantum computers do not work on the basis of the laws of classical physics or information, but on the basis of quantum mechanical states.
Back in 2019, a Google research report came to light due to an oversight that made it clear what the company meant when it promised for years that it would soon achieve "quantum supremacy". The basis for this is formed by quantum computers that work with so-called quantum bits or qubits. Unlike conventional computer bits, these can not only assume the states zero and one, but many different values. Since 2019, the Google report has been regarded as the first experimental proof that quantum computers of the near future will make even today's supercomputers look like long-extinct dinosaurs. According to the report, a quantum computer constructed by Google with fifty-three qubits - the fifty-fourth had apparently broken - solved a very difficult task specially designed for this experiment within three minutes and twenty seconds. Today's fastest conventional supercomputer would have taken around ten thousand years to perform the same calculation. At the end of 2022, IBM presented a quantum computer with 433 qubits under the name Osprey - the world's largest system of its kind at the time. Theoretically, the concept currently in use scales up to 5,000 qubits. However, in spring 2023, IBM announced the goal of building a quantum computer with 100,000 qubits within ten years. A research and development budget of 100 million dollars has been earmarked for this. IBM and Google are regarded as leaders on the path to ever more powerful quantum computers; Amazon is also reportedly building one. In Germany, the federal government has provided almost 2 billion euros in funding; the planned German quantum computer should have a performance of at least 100 qubits by 2026 - IBM wants to deliver a system with 4,158 qubits by then - and be expanded to 500 qubits "in the medium term". The EU Commission is promoting quantum computing in its own program (EuroHPC JV) with around 7 billion euros in order to maintain the digital sovereignty of the EU region. According to forecasts, the global market for quantum technology is set to grow to one trillion dollars by 2035.
Hartmut Neven, the German head of the Google Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, postulates double exponential growth in the development of quantum computers. In reference to Moore's Law, this is already referred to as "Neven's Law". Decades ago, the former head of the chip company Intel, Gordon Moore, established that the complexity of integrated circuits doubles approximately every twenty-four months. That sounds like a lot, but it is nothing compared to double exponential, when the exponent of exponential growth has another exponent, for example ten to the power of two to the power of two. Such explosive growth is extremely rare, even in the natural world researched by humans; in computer technology it was previously unknown, one could even say unthinkable.