New Delhi Information technology companies in India are pushing for rapid adoption of quantum technology through investments and partnerships with technical institutions that will provide the latest in quantum physics, build laboratories, and scout and build quantum applications. Will nurture talent.
For example, on 23 July, Tech Mahindra signed an agreement with Mahindra University to set up the so-called Makers Lab to drive research and development in the quantum and metaverse, among other things. A day earlier, IT firm Mphasys announced an agreement with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras to “accelerate fundamental and applied research” in quantum computing.
Mphasis also announced a grant of 21 crore to develop and attract talent, provide scholarships and support startups. The company has a similar partnership with the University of Calgary in Canada.
India’s largest IT company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is also taking interest in this area. Anil Sharma, Head of Corporate Incubation at TCS, said the company has intensified engagement with academia, industry players and quantum technology vendors to build and expand its quantum network over the past year.
Quantum computers use the principles of quantum physics for information processing to deliver an alternative model of high-performance computing. They use quantum principles, superposition, to represent bits -1 and 0 together. This significantly increases their overall processing power, allowing more complex problems to be solved in a fraction of the time.
Industry experts say that although a true quantum computer does not currently exist, IT companies are hoping to take advantage of the enormous computing capabilities of such computers in the soon-to-be-provided solutions to their customers.
Nikhil Malhotra, Global Head, Makers Lab, Tech Mahindra, said, “Quantum allows us to solve some of the classical problems that we could not solve before. He explains that protein molecules are important for drug discovery. Understanding banking, fraud detection in banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector, satellite placement and cryptography are some of the areas where it can make a difference.
Mphasys, on its part, has developed an EON (Energy Optimized Network) quantum computing framework for which it has applied for a patent. The company claims that it can overcome the limitations of the Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) quantum computing system.
NISQ refers to the current era in quantum computing, in which firms can develop working quantum computers that classical computers cannot. Classical computers can then run machine learning (ML) operations on those results to obtain the final solution. This is how Quantum-as-a-Service (QaS) products are currently offered.
That said, industry experts and IT firms acknowledge that the efforts will not happen overnight.
Malhotra at Tech Mahindra said some cases may currently benefit from quantum computing, while others may see use in the next 4-5 years. “But, then the industry has to start now in building that kind of skill set for them,” he said.
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