India aims to leapfrog in quantum technology with industry's help: Minister

Mumbai, Sep 14

As India embarks on its Techade journey, the government aims to build capabilities in quantum and high performance computing with the help from industry leaders like IBM, Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Wednesday.

Addressing the IBM's flagship 'Think' conference virtually, he said that quantum technology is a very important piece of India's tech journey.

"Quantum is, notwithstanding the usual marketing hype that always accompanies new emerging technologies, clearly a technology that cannot be ignored. India intends to build capabilities in quantum and high performance computing to address challenges of the future," the minister told the gathering.

Chandrasekhar, along with Sandip Patel, Managing Director, IBM India and Tom Rosamilia, Senior Vice President, IBM Software, also unveiled a white paper on quantum technology.

The minister said that India, in the coming years, must move from being a consumer of technologies to being an architect and a producer of technologies and innovation.

Chandrasekhar last year launched QSim - Quantum Computer Simulator Toolkit - to enable researchers and students to carry out research in quantum computing.

The project is being executed collaboratively by IISc Bangalore, IIT Roorkee and C-DAC with the support of MeitY.

Earlier this week, IIT-Madras became the first Indian institution to join IBM's quantum network to advance quantum computing skills development and research in the country, the tech major announced on Monday.

IIT Madras' Centre for Quantum Information, Communication and Computing (CQuICC) will focus on advancing core algorithms in research areas like quantum machine learning, quantum optimisation and applications research in finance.