Through the “Strengthen Academia” fund, the Department of Computer Science and Informatics of the UFRO today has a quantum computer for academic purposes, this university being the first in the country to have this equipment based on resonance technology. miniaturized nuclear magnetic for academic purposes in undergraduate and graduate and research
At a global level, the transition from traditional to quantum computing is already clearly visible, a technological change that promises to revolutionize information processing.
Thinking about preparing his students for this change now, the Department of Computer Science and Informatics of the University of La Frontera received the Gemini Mini Pro quantum computer, manufactured by the Chinese company SpinQ, making UFRO the first university in the country to have a device of these characteristics for academic purposes.
This computer, acquired through the competitive fund of the Academic Vice-Rector’s Office of the UFRO “Fortalece Academia”, stands as a valuable tool to bring the university community closer to the world of Qubits and which corresponds to the basic unit of information in computing. quantum.
“We are in a moment in computing that could be compared to the beginnings of computing in the 1930s and 1940s, when everything was just beginning and now we are experiencing it again, but we already know what happened. So the idea is to take this new technology and see how, from the perspective of software development, we can apply and adapt the accumulated experience and be able, in some way, to make the most of the capabilities that these machines have,” comments the director of the Department of Computer Sciences and Informatics, Dr. Samuel Sepúlveda Cuevas, who is also the academic responsible for this “Strengthen Academia” project.
On the other hand, Dr. Sepúlveda adds that “for our university, as a training unit, it is important to bring this technology to our students and also, eventually, to imbue the community with these topics, so that they do not only see them in associated news. to artificial intelligence and quantum computing, but rather to take a little more ownership of the technology that will be with us in 20, 30 or 50 years.”
The consulting firm and applied research center in information technologies coreDevX was in charge of bringing this equipment to the UFRO, which was received in an activity that brought together university authorities, academics and students.
In this instance, the CEO of coreDevX, Javier Urrutia Tobar, explained that “this machine has a purely academic purpose, it is not an ultra-powerful device, but rather it is a device that allows you to start the path in quantum computing and that is the solution that, in the coming years, will accompany the classical computing that we all know, but that will take it to the next state of power and for that we have to start walking and this is the first step that we all take at some point in life, this is the first step for quantum computing at the University of La Frontera.”
Likewise, he does not hesitate to highlight as relevant the fact that UFRO is the first Chilean university that has a quantum computer for academia. “In other universities there are optics laboratories that assemble or disassemble quantum circuits, but they do not have a computer with a programmable interface, as UFRO has today.”
Seeking to impact undergraduate and postgraduate training, as well as strengthening lines of research associated with programming, researchers from the Department of Computer Science and Informatics of the Faculty of Engineering and Sciences are training in the use of the Gemini Mini Pro quantum computer and, with this, provide new knowledge that allows the University of La Frontera to be positioned as a reference in cutting-edge technology.
Written by: Daphne Bormann Stop
Faculty of Engineering and Sciences
