Nvidia 加入量子運算雲端服務競賽

Recently Yahoo News on-line reported the following:

Nvidia Joins Race in Quantum-Computing Cloud Services

Jane Lanhee Lee

Tue, March 19, 2024 at 7:25 a.m. PDT

(Bloomberg) -- Nvidia Corp. launched a cloud service for researchers to test out their quantum-computing software, seeking to profit from a field that’s winning funding around the world despite yielding few groundbreaking applications so far.

The Nvidia Quantum Cloud will first comprise a data center stacked with AI chips and systems that together simulate a quantum computer, according to Tim Costa, director of high-performance computing and quantum computing at the company. Unlike other cloud services, Nvidia’s has no quantum computer attached to it at the moment, but it will provide access to third-party quantum computers in the future, Costa told Bloomberg ahead of the GPU Technology Conference Monday.

The AI chipmaker’s cloud is years late to an already crowded arena. Microsoft Corp. started Azure Quantum in 2019, with Amazon Web Services launching Braket that same year. IBM Corp.-backed startup Strangeworks Inc. was founded in 2017 and has dozens of quantum computers on its cloud. But Alphabet Inc.’s Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure will integrate Nvidia’s quantum simulator into their offerings, Costa said.

The world’s most powerful countries and corporations are pledging billions of dollars to quantum computing research, although there are few known instances where a quantum computer has run practical applications. The global zeal stems from the promise of computation speeds that are hundreds of millions times faster than supercomputers today, along with fear of the consequences — both military and commercial — for those who miss out.

For most of the 2010s, Nvidia was largely a bystander in that push. But it’s now a key player in quantum research after its graphics processing units, designed to speed up video games, paid dividends thanks to their ability to execute a certain type of computation quickly.

A similar version of these calculations is used in quantum computer simulations, making Nvidia AI chips such as the H100 Tensor Core GPUs an important component of quantum research. The GPU is now also powerful enough to run classical algorithms once too big for computers, such as those used for drug and materials discovery and other scientific domains, said Costa.

Separately, Nvidia also said that its chips will be used in the publicly-funded ABCI-Q supercomputer that Fujitsu Ltd. is building for the quantum computing research arm of Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. The supercomputer will use more than 2,000 Nvidia H100 Tensor Core GPUs and will be deployed early next year.

The company said that supercomputers at Denmark’s Novo Nordisk Foundation and Australia’s Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre, both dedicated to research into quantum computing and other fields of cutting-edge technology, will also use Nvidia hardware.

Translation

（彭博）— Nvidia (輝達)公司推出了一項雲端服務，供研究人員測試他們的量子運算軟體，尋求從這個在世界各地贏得資金的領域中獲利，儘管迄今為止量子運算幾乎沒有產生出有突破性的應用。

Nvidia 高效能運算和量子運算總監 Tim Costa 表示，Nvidia 量子雲端將首先包括一個資料中心，裡面堆滿了人工智能晶片和系統，這些晶片和系統一起模擬量子電腦。Costa 在周一 GPU 技術會議之前告訴彭博社稱, 與其他雲端服務不同，Nvidia 的雲端服務目前沒有附加量子電腦，但未來將提供對第三方量子電腦的接入。

這家人工智能晶片製造商的雲端遲來遲多年，進入本已擁擠的舞台。 微軟公司於 2019 年推出了 Azure Quantum，亞馬遜網路服務於同年推出了 Braket。 IBM 公司支持的新創公司 Strangeworks Inc. 成立於 2017 年，在其雲端擁有數十台量子電腦。 Costa表示，Alphabet Inc. 的Google雲端、微軟 Azure 和甲骨文雲基礎設施將把 Nvidia 的量子模擬器整合到他們的產品中。

世界上最強大的國家和公司承諾為量子運算研究投入數十億美元，儘管量子電腦運行實際應用的已知實例很少。 全球的熱情源於運算速度比當今超級電腦快數億倍的承諾，以及對那些錯過機會的人的後果 - 軍事和商業 - 的恐懼。

在 2010 年代的大部分時間裡，Nvidia 基本上就是這項推動的旁觀者。 但它現在是量子研究的關鍵參與者，其旨在加速視頻遊戲的圖形處理單元, 由於能夠快速執行某種類型的計算而獲得了回報。

類似這些計算的版本在量子電腦模擬中使用，使 H100 Tensor Core GPU 等 Nvidia AI 晶片成為量子研究的重要組成部分。 Costa 表示，GPU 現在也足夠強大，可以運行曾經對電腦來說太大的傳统演算法，例如用於藥物和材料發現以及其他的科學領域。

另外，Nvidia也表示，其晶片將用於富士通有限公司正在為日本國家先進工業科學技術研究所的量子運算研究部門建造的公共資助的 ABCI-Q 超級電腦。 這款超級電腦將使用 2000 多個 Nvidia H100 Tensor Core GPU，並將於明年初部署。

該公司表示，致力於研究量子運算和其他尖端技術領域的丹麥 Novo Nordisk Foundation 和澳洲Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre 的超級電腦也將使用 Nvidia 硬體。

              So, Nvidia Corp. has launched a cloud service for researchers to test out their quantum-computing software. Previously Nvidia was largely a bystander in this sector, now it is a key player in quantum research. I am wondering how this field will be impacted by the entry of Nivida.

Note:

A graphics processing unit (GPU) is an electronic circuit that can perform mathematical calculations at high speed. Computing tasks like graphics rendering, machine learning (ML), and video editing require the application of similar mathematical operations on a large dataset. A GPU’s design allows it to perform the same operation on multiple data values in parallel. This increases its processing efficiency for many compute-intensive tasks. (https://aws.amazon.com/what-is/gpu/#:~:text)