Monthly Archives: June 2021

Farhad Manjoo: The wind and solar boom is here – Salt Lake Tribune

Posted: June 4, 2021 at 3:53 pm

Just one word, Benjamin: Solar.

Well, actually, one more: Wind.

The sun, the air and the chemistry to bottle their limitless power its looking more and more as if these constitute the worlds next great technological advance, a leap as life-changing for many of us as was aviation, the internet or, of course, plastics.

Faster than many thought possible, and despite long doubt about renewable energys practicality, a momentous transformation is well underway. We are moving from a global economy fueled primarily by climate-warming fossil fuels to one in which we will cleanly pluck most of our energy out of water, wind and the fire in the sky.

People who study energy markets say that economics alone ensures our eventual transition to clean fuels but that policy choices by the governments can speed it up. In October, the International Energy Agency declared solar power to be the cheapest new form of electricity in many places around the world, and in particularly favorable locations, solar is now the cheapest source of electricity in history.

It can be difficult to muster much optimism about humanitys capacity to address climate change, and I have argued before that it is wisest to look to the future with a pessimistic eye, if only to encourage urgent action toward collective problem-solving. (We are more likely to do something to solve our problems if were frank about how bad things might get.)

There are lots of reasons to cast doubt on the clean-energy future. Wind and solar still account for just a tiny fraction of the worlds energy production. Even their most enthusiastic supporters concede that much will need to change to realize the full potential of renewable energy. Over the coming decades consumers and businesses will have to adapt to many novel technologies, while governments will need to build new infrastructure and overhaul energy regulations built around fossil fuels.

Still, amid the general gloom of climate change, the clean-energy boom offers the rare glimmer not just of hope but of something more: excitement. The industrys bold claims are bolstered by bolder trends. Over the last couple of decades experts have consistently underestimated the declines in price, the improvements in performance and the subsequent speed of adoption of renewable power.

Unlike fossil fuels which get more expensive as we pull more of them from the ground, because extracting a dwindling resource requires more and more work renewable energy is based on technologies that get cheaper as we make more. This creates a virtuous flywheel: Because solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and related technologies to produce clean energy keep getting cheaper, we keep using more of them; as we use more of them, manufacturing scale increases, cutting prices further still and on and on.

Jenny Chase, who analyzes the solar power sector at BloombergNEF, an energy research firm, told me that when she started her job in 2005, her most optimistic scenario was that sunlight would eventually generate as much as 1% of the worlds electricity. At the time, solar power contributed essentially nothing to the global energy mix, so even a tiny fraction looked pretty good.

I thought, well, itll be a small thing, but focusing my career on something thats 1% of the worlds electricity, thats all right, she told me.

She was way off, and so were many others, including governmental agencies. Solar power surpassed 1% of global electricity generation in the middle of the last decade. Chase estimates that solar now accounts for at least 3% of the worlds electricity that is, three times as much as she once thought possible.

In a forecast published late last year, Chase and her colleagues at BloombergNEF estimated that by 2050, 56% of the worlds electricity would be produced by wind and solar power. But she says that forecast is already out of date its too low.

Others go further still. The fossil fuel era is over, declares Carbon Tracker Initiative, a nonprofit think tank that studies the economics of clean energy, in a new report. Kingsmill Bond, its energy strategist, told me that the transition to renewable energy will alter geopolitics and global economics on a scale comparable to that of the Industrial Revolution.

He cites one telling example to illustrate how and why. The worlds largest conventional oil field, Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, has the capacity to produce nearly 4 million barrels of oil per day. If you were to convert Ghawars annual oil output into electricity, youd get almost 1 petawatt-hour of power per year. (Thats nearly enough to power Japan for a year; the worlds annual electrical energy demand is 27 petawatt-hours.)

The Ghawar oil field takes up a lot of space about 3,000 square miles, around the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined. But it soon might sound crazy to use that much sunny land for drilling oil. Bond estimates that if you put up solar panels on an area the size of Ghawar, you could generate more than 1 petawatt-hour per year more than youd get from the oil buried under Ghawar.

But the oil will one day run out, while the sun will keep shining over Ghawar and not just there, but everywhere else, too. This is the magic of the sun, as Bond explains: Only Saudi Arabia has a Ghawar, but with solar power almost every country in the world with enough space can generate 1 petawatt-hour of power (and without endangering the planet to boot).

Its important to note that there remain hurdles in the way of a renewable-energy future. The most obvious one is the infrastructure required to take advantage of all this electric power more robust power grids, for instance, and the transformation to electric power of everything from cars to container ships.

These problems are considerable but solvable. In his upcoming book, Electrify, Saul Griffith, an inventor (and MacArthur fellow) who is a co-founder of an organization called Rewiring America, argues that many of the barriers to a clean-energy future are systemic and bureaucratic, not technological.

Griffith says that the transformation will be an economic bonanza many analysts predict huge job creation and savings in energy prices from a switch to renewables. But if we want it in time to avert some of the most catastrophic predictions about a warming climate, we need to push the changes along even faster. Among other things, Griffith calls for a complete overhaul of our energy policies in order to reduce some of the regulatory costs of expanding renewable power.

What kinds of costs? Many small, unforeseen things. For instance, in much of the U.S., installing rooftop solar panels requires an extensive and expensive permitting process that substantially increases the price. Through streamlined rules, other countries have managed to greatly reduce such costs.

This wont be easy; the fossil-fuel industry is actively battling the rise of renewables. But at most, it can only slow things down. A carbon-free energy economy is coming whether oil and coal companies like it or not.

Farhad Manjoo | The New York Times (Earl Wilson/The New York Times)

Farhad Manjoo is a columnist for The New York Times.

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Looking to the future of quantum cloud computing – Siliconrepublic.com – Siliconrepublic.com

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Trinity College Dublins Dan Kilper and University of Arizonas Saikat Guha discuss the quantum cloud and how it could be achieved.

Quantum computing has been receiving a lot of attention in recent years as several web-scale providers race towards so-called quantum advantage the point at which a quantum computer is able to exceed the computing abilities of classical computing.

Large public sector investments worldwide have fuelled research activity within the academic community. The first claim of quantum advantage emerged in 2019 when Google, NASA and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) demonstrated a computation that the quantum computer completed in 200 seconds and that the ORNL supercomputer verified up to the point of quantum advantage, estimated to require 10,000 years to complete to the end.

Roadmaps that take quantum computers even further into this regime are advancing steadily. IBM has made quantum computers available for online access for many years now and recently Amazon and Microsoft started cloud services to provide access for users to several different quantum computing platforms. So, what comes next?

The step beyond access to a single quantum computer is access to a network of quantum computers. We are starting to see this emerge from the web or cloud-based quantum computers offered by cloud providers effectively quantum computing as a service, sometimes referred to as cloud-based quantum computing.

This consists of quantum computers connected by classical networks and exchanging classical information in the form of bits, or digital ones and zeros. When quantum computers are connected in this way, they each can perform separate quantum computations and return the classical results that the user is looking for.

It turns out that with quantum computers, there are other possibilities. Quantum computers perform operations on quantum bits, or qubits. It is possible for two quantum computers to exchange information in the form of qubits instead of classical bits. We refer to networks that transport qubits as quantum networks. If we can connect two or more quantum computers over a quantum network, then they will be able to combine their computations such that they might behave as a single larger quantum computer.

Quantum computing distributed over quantum networks thus has the potential to significantly enhance the computing power of quantum computers. In fact, if we had quantum networks today, many believe that we could immediately build large quantum computers far into the advantage regime simply by connecting many instances of todays quantum computers over a quantum network. With quantum networks built, and interconnected at various scales, we could build a quantum internet. And at the heart of this quantum internet, one would expect to find quantum computing clouds.

At present, scientists and engineers are still working on understanding how to construct such a quantum computing cloud. The key to quantum computing power is the number of qubits in the computer. These are typically micro-circuits or ions kept at cryogenic temperatures, near minus 273 degrees Celsius.

While these machines have been growing steadily in size, it is expected that they will eventually reach a practical size limit and therefore further computing power is likely to come from network connections across quantum computers within the data centre, very much like todays current classical computing data centres. Instead of racks of servers, one would expect rows of cryostats.

Quantum computing distributed over quantum networks has the potential to significantly enhance the computing power of quantum computers

Once we start imagining a quantum internet, we quickly realise that there are many software structures that we use in the classical internet that might need some type of analogue in the quantum internet.

Starting with the computers, we will need quantum operating systems and computing languages. This is complicated by the fact that quantum computers are still limited in size and not engineered to run operating systems and programming the way that we do in classical computers. Nevertheless, based on our understanding of how a quantum computer works, researchers have developed operating systems and programming languages that might be used once a quantum computer of sufficient power and functionality is able to run them.

Cloud computing and networking rely on other software technologies such as hypervisors, which manage how a computer is divided up into several virtual machines, and routing protocols to send data over the network. In fact, research is underway to develop each of these for the quantum internet. With quantum computer operating systems still under development, it is difficult to develop a hypervisor to run multiple operating systems on the same quantum computer as a classical hypervisor would.

By understanding the physical architecture of quantum computers, however, one can start to imagine how it might be organised to support different subsets of qubits to effectively run as separate quantum computers, potentially using different physical qubit technologies and employing different sub-architectures, within a single machine.

One important difference between quantum and classical computers and networks is that quantum computers can make use of classical computers to perform many of their functions. In fact, a quantum computer in itself is a tremendous feat of classical system engineering with many complex controls to set up and operate the quantum computations. This is a very different starting point from classical computers.

The same can be said for quantum networks, which have the classical internet to provide control functions to manage the network operations. It is likely that we will rely on classical computers and networks to operate their quantum analogues for some time. Just as a computer motherboard has many other types of electronics other than the microprocessor chip, it is likely that quantum computers will continue to rely on classical processors to do much of the mundane work behind their operation.

With the advent of the quantum internet, it is presumable that a quantum-signalling-equipped control plane might be able to support certain quantum network functions even more efficiently.

When talking about quantum computers and networks, scientists often refer to fault-tolerant operations. Fault tolerance is a particularly important step toward realising quantum cloud computing. Without fault tolerance, quantum operations are essentially single-shot computations that are initialised and then run to a stopping point that is limited by the accumulation of errors due to quantum memory lifetimes expiring as well as the noise that enters the system with each step in the computation.

Fault tolerance would allow for quantum operations to continue indefinitely with each result of a computation feeding the next. This is essential, for example, to run a computer operating system.

In the case of networks, loss and noise limit the distance that qubits can be transported on the order of 100km today. Fault tolerance through operations such as quantum error correction would allow for quantum networks to extend around the world. This is quite difficult for quantum networks because, unlike classical networks, quantum signals cannot be amplified.

We use amplifiers everywhere in classical networks to boost signals that are reduced due to losses, for example, from traveling down an optical fibre. If we boost a qubit signal with an optical amplifier, we would destroy its quantum properties. Instead, we need to build quantum repeaters to overcome signal losses and noise.

Together we have our sights set on realising the networks that will make up the quantum internet

If we can connect two fault-tolerant quantum computers at a distance that is less than the loss limits for the qubits, then the quantum error correction capabilities in the computers can in principle recover the quantum signal. If we build a chain of such quantum computers each passing quantum information to the next, then we can achieve the fault-tolerant quantum network that we need. This chain of computers linking together is reminiscent of the early classical internet when computers were used to route packets through the network. Today we use packet routers instead.

If you look under the hood of a packet router, it is composed of many powerful microprocessors that have replaced the computer routers and are much more efficient at the specific routing tasks involved. Thus, one might imagine a quantum analogue to the packet router, which would be a small purpose-built quantum computer designed for recovering and transmitting qubits through the network. These are what we refer to today as quantum repeaters, and with these quantum repeaters we could build a global quantum internet.

Currently there is much work underway to realise a fault-tolerant quantum repeater. Recently a team in the NSF Center for Quantum Networks (CQN)achieved an important milestone in that they were able to use a quantum memory to transmit a qubit beyond its usual loss limit. This is a building block for a quantum repeater. The SFI Connect Centre in Ireland is also working on classical network control systems that can be used to operate a network of such repeaters.

Together we have our sights set on realising the networks that will make up the quantum internet.

By Dan Kilper and Saikat Guha

Dan Kilper is professor of future communication networks at Trinity College Dublin and director of the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Connect research centre.

Saikat Guha is director of the NSF-ERC Center for Quantum Networks and professor of optical sciences, electrical and computer engineering, and applied mathematics at the University of Arizona.

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Swedish university is behind quantum computing breakthrough – ComputerWeekly.com

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Swedens Chalmers University of Technology has achieved a quantum computing efficiency breakthrough through a novel type of thermometer that is capable of simplifying and rapidly measuring temperatures during quantum calculations.

The discovery adds a more advanced benchmarking tool that will accelerate Chalmers work in quantum computing development.

The novel thermometer is the latest innovation to emerge from the universitys research to develop an advanced quantum computer. The so-called OpenSuperQ project at Chalmers is coordinated with technology research organisation the Wallenberg Centre for Quantum Technology (WACQT), which is the OpenSuperQ projects main technology partner.

WACQT has set the goal of building a quantum computer capable of performing precise calculations by 2030. The technical requirements behind this ambitious target are based on superconducting circuits and developing aquantum computer with at least 100 well-functioning qubits. To realise this ambition, the OpenSuperQ project will require a processor working temperature close to absolute zero, ideally as low as 10 millikelvin (-273.14 C).

Headquartered at Chalmers Universitys research hub in Gothenburg, the OpenSuperQ project, launched in 2018, is intended to run until 2027. Working alongside the university in Gothenburg, WACQT is also operating support projects being run at the Royal Institute of Technology (Kungliga Tekniska Hgskolan) in Stockholm and collaborating universities in Lund, Stockholm, Linkping and Gothenburg.

Pledged capital funding for the WACQT-managed OpenSuperQ project which has been committed by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation together with 20 other private corporations in Sweden, currently amounts to SEK1.3bn (128m). In March, the foundation scaled up its funding commitment to WACQT, doubling its annual budget to SEK80m over the next four years.

The increased funding by the foundation will lead to the expansion of WACQTs QC research team, and the organisation is looking to recruit a further 40 researchers for the OpenSuperQ project in 2021-2022. A new team is to be established to study nanophotonic devices, which can enable the interconnection of several smaller quantum processors into a large quantum computer.

The Wallenberg sphere incorporates 16 public and private foundations operated by various family members. Each year, these foundations allocate about SEK2.5bn to research projects in the fields of technology, natural sciences and medicine in Sweden.

The OpenSuperQ project aims to take Sweden to the forefront of quantum technologies, including computing, sensing, communications and simulation, said Peter Wallenberg, chairman of the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.

Quantum technology has enormous potential, so it is vital that Sweden has the necessary expertise in this area. WACQT has built up a qualified research environment and established collaborations with Swedish industry. It has succeeded in developing qubits with proven problem-solving ability. We can move ahead with great confidence in what WACQT will go on to achieve.

The novel thermometer breakthrough opens the door to experiments in the dynamic field of quantum thermodynamics, said Simone Gasparinetti, assistant professor at Chalmers quantum technology laboratory.

Our thermometer is a superconducting circuit and directly connected to the end of the waveguide being measured, said Gasparinetti. It is relatively simple and probably the worlds fastest and most sensitive thermometer for this particular purpose at the millikelvin scale.

Coaxial cables and waveguides the structures that guide waveforms and serve as the critical connection to the quantum processor remain key components in quantum computers. The microwave pulses that travel down the waveguides to the quantum processor are cooled to extremely low temperatures along the way.

For researchers, a fundamental goal is to ensure that these waveguides are not carrying noise due to the thermal motion of electrons on top of the pulses that they send. Precise temperature measurement readings of the electromagnetic fields are needed at the cold end of the microwave waveguides, the point where the controlling pulses are delivered to the computers qubits.

Working at the lowest possible temperature minimises the risk of introducing errors in the qubits. Until now, researchers have only been able to measure this temperature indirectly, and with relatively long delays. Chalmers Universitys novel thermometer enables very low temperatures to be measured directly at the receiving end of the waveguide with elevated accuracy and with extremely high time resolution.

The novel thermometer developed at the university provides researchers with a value-added tool to measure the efficiency of systems while identifying possible shortcomings, said Per Delsing, a professor at the department of microtechnology and nanoscience at Chalmers and director of WACQT.

A certain temperature corresponds to a given number of thermal photons, and that number decreases exponentially with temperature, he said. If we succeed in lowering the temperature at the end where the waveguide meets the qubit to 10 millikelvin, the risk of errors in our qubits is reduced drastically.

The universitys primary role in the OpenSuperQ project is to lead the work on developing the application algorithms that will be executed on the OpenSuperQ quantum computer. It will also support the development of algorithms for quantum chemistry, optimisation and machine learning.

Also, Chalmers will head up efforts to improve quantum coherence in chips with multiple coupled qubits, including device design, process development, fabrication, packaging and testing. It will also conduct research to evaluate the performance of 2-qubit gates and develop advanced qubit control methods to mitigate systematic and incoherent errors to achieve targeted gate fidelities.

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Global IT giant to partner with U of C on quantum computing centre – Calgary Herald

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A global IT giant has announced plans to partner with the University of Calgary to create a centre of excellence for quantum computing in the city.

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A global IT giant has announced plans to partner with the University of Calgary to create a centre of excellence for quantum computing in the city.

Bangalore-based Mphasis Ltd., a provider of IT outsourcing services, announced Wednesday that it will set up a Canadian headquarters in Calgary. The move is expected to create 500 to 1,000 local jobs within the next two to three years, according to company CEO Nitin Rakesh.

The company will also establish what it dubs the Quantum City Centre of Excellence at the University of Calgary to serve as a hub for companies focused on the commercial development of quantum technologies. Mphasis will be the anchor tenant and will work to draw in other companies working in the field.

Quantum computing uses the principles of quantum physics to solve problems. It is considered to be a huge leap forward from traditional computer technology, and has futuristic applications in the fields of medicine, energy, fintech, logistics and more.

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In a virtual news conference Wednesday, Premier Jason Kenney called quantum computing one of the most promising emerging high-tech sectors. He said the partnership between Mphasis and the University of Calgary will help make Alberta a destination of choice for investment capital and talent in this growing field.

The goal is to make Alberta a force to be reckoned with in quantum computing, machine learning and AI economically, but also intellectually, Kenney said. Post-secondary students will have incredible opportunities to master the most sought-after skills through this venture.

Mphasis also announced its plans to establish Sparkle Calgary, which will offer training in artificial intelligence and automation technology for Albertans seeking a career transition. Rakesh said through this platform, Mphasis hopes to help address the skills shortage that currently plagues Albertas tech sector, while at the same time helping out-of-work Albertans find a place in the new economy.

Theres a ton of data expertise that sits at the heart of the oil and gas industry, Rakesh said. So can we take that ability to apply data knowledge, data science, and really re-skill (those workers) toward cloud computing . . . Thats the vision we want to see.

The University of Calgary has been working for some time to help establish Alberta as a leader for quantum computing research through its Institute for Quantum Science and Technology a multidisciplinary group of researchers from the areas of computer science, mathematics, chemistry and physics. The U of C is also a member of Quantum Alberta, which aims to accelerate Quantum Science research, development and commercialization in the province.

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U of C president Ed McCauley said Wednesday he hopes that the partnership with Mphasis will lead to the birth of a new wave of startup companies in Calgary, ones that will use cutting-edge technology developed on campus.

This (quantum) technology will not only create its own industry, but it will fuel advances in others, McCauley said. Calgary will not only be an energy capital, it will be a quantum capital, too.

The federal government has identified quantum computing as critically important to the future economy. The most recent federal budget includes $360 million for a National Quantum Strategy encompassing funding for research, students and skills development.

Mphasis is the second major Indian IT company in recent months to announce it will set up shop in Calgary. In March, Infosys a New York Stock Exchange-listed global consulting and IT services firm with more than 249,000 employees worldwide said it will bring 500 jobs to the city over the next three years as part of the next phase of its Canadian expansion.

Like Mphasis, Infosys has formed partnerships with Calgarys post-secondary institutions to invest jointly in training programs that will help to develop a local technology talent pool.

astephenson@postmedia.com

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What is Thermodynamic Computing and Could It Become Important? – HPCwire

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What, exactly, is thermodynamic computing? (Yes, we know everything obeys thermodynamic laws.) A trio of researchers from Microsoft, UC San Diego, and Georgia Tech have written an interesting viewpoint in the June issue of Communications of ACM A Vision to Compute like Nature: Thermodynamically.

Arguing that traditional computing is approaching hard limits for many familiar reasons, Todd Hylton (UCSD), Thomas Conte (Georgia Tech), and Mark Hill (Microsoft) sketch out this idea that it may be possible to harness thermodynamic computing to solve many currently difficult problem sets and to do so with lower power and better performance.

Animals, plants, bacteria, and proteins solve problems by spontaneously finding energy-efficient configurations that enable them to thrive in complex, resource-constrained environments. For example, proteins fold naturally into a low-energy state in response to their environment, write the researchers. In fact, all matter evolves toward low-energy configurations in accord with the Laws of Thermodynamics. For near-equilibrium systems these ideas are well known and have been used extensively in the analysis of computational efficiency and in machine learning techniques, write the researchers in their paper.

Theres a nice, summary description of the TC notion on a Computing Community Consortium (CCC) blog this week:

What if we designed computing systems to solve problems through a similar process? The writers envision a thermodynamic computing system (TCS) as a combination of a conventional computing system and novel TC hardware. The conventional computer is a host through which users can access the TC and define a problem for the TC to solve. The TC, on the other hand, is an open thermodynamic system directly connected to real-world input potentials (for example, voltages), which drive the adaptation of its internal organization via the transport of charge through it to relieve those potentials.

In the ACM Viewpoint, the researchers say, [W]e advocate a new, physically grounded, computational paradigm centered on thermodynamics and an emerging understanding of using thermodynamics to solve problems that we call Thermodynamic Computing or TC. Like quantum computers, TCs are distinguished by their ability to employ the underlying physics of the computing substrate to accomplish a task. (See the figure below from the paper)

The recent Viewpoint is actually the fruit of a 2019 thermodynamic computing workshop sponsored by CCC and organized by the ACM Viewpoint authors. In many ways, their idea sounds somewhat similar to adiabatic quantum computing (e.g. D-Wave Systems) but without the need to maintain quantum state coherence during computation.

Among existing computing systems, TC is perhaps most similar to neuromorphic computing, except that it replaces rule-driven adaptation and neuro-biological emulation with thermo-physical evolution, is how the researchers describe TC.

The broad idea to let a system seek thermodynamic equilibrium to compute isnt new and has been steadily advancing, as they note in their paper:

The idea of using the physics of self-organizing electronic or ionic devices to solve computational problems has shown dramatic progress in recent years. For example, networks of oscillators built from devices exhibiting metal-insulator transitions have been shown to solve computational problems in the NP-hard class.Memristive devices have internal state dynamics driven by complex electronic, ionic, and thermodynamic considerations,which, when integrated into networks, result in large-scale complex dynamics that can be employed in applications such as reservoir computing.Other systems of memristive devices have been shown to implement computational models such as Hopfield networks and to build neural networks capable of unsupervised learning.

Today we see opportunity to couple these recent experimental resultswith the new theories of non-equilibrium systems through both existing (for example, Boltzmann Machines) and newer (for example, Thermodynamic Neural Network) model systems.

The researchers say thermodynamic computing approaches are particularly well-suited for searching complex energy landscapes that leverage both rapid device fluctuations and the ability to search a large space in parallel, and addressing NP-complete combinatorial optimization problems or sampling many-variable probability distributions.

They suggest a three-prong TC development roadmap:

At least initially, we expect that TC will enable new computing opportunities rather than replace Classical Computing at what Classical Computing does well (enough), following the disruption path articulated by Christensen.These new opportunities will likely enable orders of magnitude more energy efficiency and the ability to self-organize across scales as an intrinsic part of their operation. These may include self-organizing neuromorphic systems and the simulation of complex physical or biological domains, but the history of technology shows that compelling new applications often emerge after the technology is available.

The viewpoint is fascinating and best read directly.

Link to ACM Thermodynamic Computing Viewpoint: https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2021/6/252841-a-vision-to-compute-like-nature/fulltext

Link to CCC blog: https://us5.campaign-archive.com/?e=afe05237d1&u=3403318289e02657adfc0822d&id=7b8ae80cfa

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IBM has partnered with IITs, others to advance training, research in quantum computing – Elets

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The institutions which have been selected, the respective faculty and students will be able to access IBM quantum systems, quantum learning resources and, quantum tools over IBM Cloud for education and research purposes. This will allow these institutions to work on actual quantum computers and program these using the Qiskit open-source framework.

The selected institutions are Indian Institute of Science Education & Research (IISER) Pune, IISER Thiruvananthapuram, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Jodhpur, IIT- Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Madras, Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) Kolkata, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Delhi, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) Mumbai and the University of Calcutta.

The collaboration with Indias top institutions is a part IBM Quantum Educators program that helps faculty in the quantum field connect with others. The program offers multiple benefits like additional access to systems beyond IBMs open systems, pulse access on the additional systems, priority considerations when in queue and private collaboration channels with other educators in the program, read an IBM notice.

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Malta Becomes Newest Participant in the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking – HPCwire

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June 4, 2021 Malta joins the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), a joint initiative between the EU, European countries, and private partners that pools resources to develop a world-class supercomputing ecosystem in Europe.

Malta, formally an Observer on the EuroHPC JU Governing, will now be a full Member, along side the other 32 Participating States.

Anders Dam Jensen, the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) Executive Director, said:

We are delighted to welcome Malta to the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking family. Malta is joining the JU at an exciting moment for European digital autonomy, with the recent inauguration of the Vega supercomputer in Slovenia, and two more supercomputers will reinforce Europes supercomputer ecosystem shortly, MeluXina in Luxembourg and Karolina in Bulgaria. The coming years will seefurther acceleration and development of the EuroHPC JU project, as we strive towards Europes ambition to become a world leader in high-performance computing, and we are thrilled that Malta is joining us on this journey.

Background information

The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking wasestablishedin 2018 andis autonomous since September 2020.

The EuroHPC JU is currently equipping the EU with an infrastructure of petascaleand precursor of exascale supercomputers, and developing the necessary technologies, applications and skills for reaching full exascale capabilities by 2023.One supercomputer is currently operational in Slovenia (Vega); another one (MeluXina)will be officially inaugurated in Luxembourg on 7 June 2021. Five more EuroHPC supercomputers have been procured and will be operational in 2021:Discoverer(Bulgaria),Karolina(Czech Republic),Deucalion(Portugal),Leonardo(Italy), andLumi(Finland).

In addition,through its research and innovation agenda, the EuroHPC JU is also strengthening the European knowledge base in HPC technologies and bridging the digital skills gap, notably through the creation of a network of national HPC CompetenceCentresand other pan-European education initiatives.

The EuroHPC machines will be available to European researchers, industry, public administrations and SMEs. They will be a strategic resource for Europe, underpinning advances in sectors such asbio-engineering, weather forecasting, the fight against climate change, personalized medicine, as well as in the discovery of new materials and drugs that will benefit EU citizens.

Anew regulationis currently being discussed at EU level and is expected to enter into force in the coming months, aiming to enable a further investment of EUR 7 billion in the next generation of supercomputers,such asexascale, post-exascaleand quantum computers and an ambitious R&Iprogramme.

Source: EuroHPC JU

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Members of local retirement community venturing out to the blackjack tables at LAuberge Casino – BRProud.com

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by: ALLISON BRUHL, Michael Scheidt

St. James Place

BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) Many retirement communities and nursing homes were greatly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nursing home residents in our area were unable to see their loved ones for a long time.

The staff at St. James Place have done what they can to keep their residents healthy and occupied with fun activities.

One of those activities has been the card game, Blackjack.

According to St. James Place, theassisted living residents actually formed a Blackjack card playing group led by dealer and instructor, William, St. James Places life enrichment coordinator.

Well, LAuberge Casino & Hotel Baton Rouge got word of this card club and on Thursday, residents of St. James Place are getting the opportunity to play blackjack at some private tables.

The St. James Place Blackjack Club began in April 2020 with me dealing cards to a resident who was sitting by herself during happyhour, saidWilliam Myhand, Life Enrichment Coordinator for Assisted Living. Within a month, we formed a group and have played Blackjack every week to this day. It makes me very happy to see how much joy the games have brought to our residents over the past year.

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Members of local retirement community venturing out to the blackjack tables at LAuberge Casino - BRProud.com

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The Best Casino Film Locations in Famous Movies – Film Threat

Posted: at 3:50 pm

The City of Lights, Las Vegas, is synonymous with casino movies. Its the first-place movie directors think of when they want to shoot scenes that involve extravagance, glamour and unfettered gambling.

Las Vegas is such a magnet for casino makers, that some directors have had to rewrite scenes to feature the city. In light of that information, weve prepared this article to highlight some of the best movie locations in Nevada. Intrigued? Lets dive right in.

The Fountains at the Bellagio Casino are beautiful, majestic and unlike no other. Unsurprisingly, theyre favorites among casino movie directors, from the Hangover series to the Oceans 11 and Oceans 13 films.

In Hangover III, many fans will probably remember the scenes shot at Caesars Palace. But theres a scene, Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong) flies past the Bellagios fountain in a parachute. Oceans Eleven also focuses on the fountain show but Oceans Thirteen gives a tour of the Bellagio Hotel and Casino.

Caesars Palace is arguably the most iconic filming location in Las Vegas. Think about it. Over 50 movies have been shot at this famous casino in the past 50 years. Below are the top five most famous flicks:

The Original Hangover and Part III of the movie feature scenes throughout the casino. In Iron Man, the scene where Tony Stark talks to a reporter outside of a casino is shot at Caesars. Theres also a scene where he plays craps inside the establishment.

In 21, the genius blackjack players visit the casino occasionally to play Classic 21. Rain Man also features the films stars playing blackjack while in Godzilla, theres a giant screen that shows revelers at the Caesars Palace watching the monster while it wrecks Las Vegas.

Caesars has certainly benefited greatly from the fame brought about by movies. It has even expanded outside of Nevada: it is one of the best PA casinos at casinos.us. Its also growing rapidly in the online casino space, where its website provides casino services in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Planet Hollywood is owned by Caesars Palace. Logically, Caesars recommends movie makers to shoot some of their scenes at the casino to popularize it. One such movie is 21. While it shot some scenes at Caesars Palace, the majority of scenes that involve a casino were shot at Planet Hollywood Casino.

In 21the moviePlanet Hollywood Casino show cases most of its table games and slot machines. It also gave a glimpse of its live performance section, where singers like JLO regularly hold shows.

In case youre wondering, 21 isnt the only movie shot at Planet Hollywood Casino. Knocked Up, the 2007 film starring Seth Rogan also had some scenes shot at the establishment. The Hangover Part III, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 and Think Like a Man Too also feature scenes taken at the casino.

The Mirage Hotel and Casino is one of the most imposing buildings in Las Vegas. Just one glance and youre immediately drawn in. The casino was initially built by Steve Wynn but was later sold to MGM Resorts International.

In the movie space, the Mirage has caught the attention of 20+ producers. Matt Damon, for example, played poker with his Rounders buddies at this establishment. Vegas Vacation, a movie based on Las Vegas fun and starring Chevy Chase, was shot at the Mirage Hotel almost in its entirety.

The Wolf of Wall Street also took some scenes at the Mirage, mainly Jordan Belforts bachelors party. Movies aside, this casino has also appeared in video games like Grand Theft Auto, Need for Speed and Hitman.

Circus Circus Las Vegas has been around for over 40 years. Its popular with families that want to experience live concerts with family members. It also features cheap restaurants, theme parks, bars, and swimming pools. The only thing you might not like is that its crowded most of the time.

With that in mind, Circus Circus is a popular target for film directors. From James Bond to the Corvette Summer, theres been plenty of flicks shot at the place. Like the Mirage, youve probably seen a casino that looks similar to Circus Circus in GTA: San Andreas and the Crew video games.

The Tropicana is one of the oldest casinos in Las Vegas, having launched in the 1950s. Owing to that backdrop, it has been around since the days the mob run things in Nevada. It has also hosted lots of legends, from Elvis to Michael Jackson.

In the Hollywood space, the casino began to attract film makers in the early 1960s. Elvis Presley shot Viva Las Vegas at this casino in 1964. James Bonds Diamonds are Forever also feature scenes from the same place.

Other films and TV shows shot at the Tropicana include the Godfather Part II, the showVega$ and Lets Make a Deal. Las Vegas Gambit and Dealers Choice game shows, were also shot at the casino.

Not all Las Vegas-based movie take scenes inside casinos. Some filmmakers are more intrigued by Fremont Street, a famous street in Vegas where celebrities and street performers show case their talents.

Fremont is also the address for many casinos in Clark County. Whats more, it has a reputation for both legal and illegal adult businesses. In light of that information, it has often attracted film makers of all backgrounds.

The first film to feature a scene from Fremont was Dark Citya 1950 movie. In 1964, Elvis also shot a scene for one of his Viva Las Vegas flicks in the same street. Diamonds are Forever, Vega$ and Flaming Lips also featured the stretch.

Movies aside, magician Chris Angel is a frequent performer at the place. On the other hand, musician the Weeknd also shot his songs Blinding Lights and Heartless at the place.

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The Best Casino Film Locations in Famous Movies - Film Threat

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The Island at Ellis opens as a tiki bar on the second floor of The Front Yard at Ellis Island – Eater Vegas

Posted: at 3:50 pm

Diners who head up to the second floor of The Front Yard at Ellis Island experience a one-month-only tiki bar filled with Polynesian decor, tropical bites, and rum-filled drinks. The restaurant converts into The Island at Ellis through July 4, sponsored by Bacardi.

The entire upstairs went through a decor change with tiki-themed curtains, alligator boats with flowers hanging from the ceiling, skulls on chandeliers, beach balls wrapped in rope, and more everywhere.

We wanted to really deck out the space as much as possible, says Christina Ellis, the director of marketing for Ellis Island. We have been come so much fun decorating The Front Yard, just for holidays.

In the bar area, Ellis brought up two two blackjack tables and four slot machines. This is our first time having gaming up here from the four slots to blackjack tables. And we have some tiki felts on those, she says, noting this marks the first time the venue had gaming upstairs.

The bar area, replete with tiki figurines, features a seating area with a mid-century modern couch and high-top tables for hanging out. Diners can order coconut shrimp, a flatbread with grilled pineapple, teriyaki chicken sandwich, tiki wings with sweet chili sauce, or crispy pork belly bites to set the Polynesian vibe for the night.

One of the more interesting decorations brings a 16-foot marlin that Elliss dad caught in Hawaii in 1990 hanging over the staircase. The whole towns waiting because it was this record breaking fish, she says of night he caught the 950-pound marlin.

In the dining room, a cute display of hula dancers decorates one nook and two little running fountains anchor the other end. Live entertainment and tiki music playing round out the experience. For those who want a tiki-themed cocktail, the bar has a Painkiller, Mermaids Hangover with spiced rum, Scorpion Punch with jalapeo syrup, a strawberry lemongrass spritz, and more going for $14, all served in tiki-appropriate glassware.

The tiki bar will be open Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. to midnight; Mondays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 4 to 10 p.m.; and Tuesdays through Thursdays from 4 to 10pm. Reservations are available through OpenTable.

A Tiki Bar Filled With Polynesian Vibes and Drinks Pops Up for a Month at Ellis Island in June [ELV]

All Coverage of The Front Yard [ELV]

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The Island at Ellis opens as a tiki bar on the second floor of The Front Yard at Ellis Island - Eater Vegas

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