When The Quantum Dragon does a roundhouse QICK...
...even Chuck Norris rotates an extra degree.
I generally refrain from sharing partnership announcements, and I REALLY refrain from butchering Chuck Norris quotes, but I am making exceptions this week for “Energy Department Announces Partnership with Fermilab and Qblox to Manufacture Foundational Quantum Control Platform for U.S. Research and Innovation” because the collaboration will manufacture, distribute, and support something called the Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit, or QICK.
QICK was developed by the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) as “an open-source platform for managing quantum readouts and controls” that will help synchronize quantum computers and quantum sensors over quantum networks. QBlox will coordinate the manufacturing and distribution of QICK within the United States. And in case you’re wondering, the whole shebang is facilitated by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Technology Commercialization.
While the announcement emphasizes such things as quantum technology commercialization, US manufacturing, the US workforce, and the scalability of public-private collaboration, I’d like to emphasize that QICK is open-source. This ought to help keep costs low, while allowing organizations to customize QICK to their respective needs, while also accelerating the development and extension of future QICK features. You know: the typical benefits of open sourcing anything.
When Chuck Norris does a roundhouse kick, the Earth rotates an extra degree.
Filed under: Quantum Computing • Government Technology Partnerships • Open Source Hardware
Image generated by Google’s language model AI.