The Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on Tuesday launched a quantum computing applications lab in the country in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to accelerate quantum computing-led research and development and enable new scientific discoveries.
The lab will provide quantum computing as a service to government ministries and departments, researchers, scientists, academia, and developers, to enable advances in areas such as manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, and aerospace engineering, AWS said.
AWS will provide hosting with technical and programmatic support for the lab.
“Today, we are delighted to take another significant step in India’s science and technology journey with the establishment of the MeitY Quantum Computing Applications Lab with the support of AWS,” Ajay Sawhney, Secretary, MeitY, said in a statement.
This MeitY initiative will provide scientific, academic, and developer communities access to a quantum computing development environment aligned with the government’s science and technology priorities.
Quantum computing is an emerging field that harnesses the laws of quantum mechanics to build powerful tools to process information.
It has the potential to solve computational problems that are beyond the reach of classical computers, and lead to new breakthroughs that can transform chemical engineering, material science, drug discovery, financial portfolio optimization, machine learning, and much more.
“By supporting the MeitY Quantum Computing Applications Lab, we aim to make quantum computing available to more scientists, researchers, developers and organisations, enabling them to access and experiment with the technology, and explore the practical applications of quantum algorithms,” said Max Peterson, Vice President, International Sales, Worldwide Public Sector, Amazon Web Services.
The MeitY quantum computing applications lab will identify quantum computing problem statements for experimentation from among Central and State governments, research institutions, and academia.
It will work with subject matter experts from the government sector to define the problem statements, and make them public, inviting applications from researchers, academia, and organisations to address them.
The lab will then provide select applicants with access to quantum computing hardware, simulators, and programming tools, on-demand and at no cost, via Amazon Braket, that enables scientists and developers to build algorithms, conduct advanced simulations, and run experiments.
Amazon Braket provides a development environment to enable users to explore and design quantum algorithms, test and troubleshoot them on simulated quantum computers, and run them on different quantum hardware technologies.
–IANS