Quantum computing market in Japan
Most of quantum computing reports are written in English. To see the Japanese market is difficult for person outside Japan because almost all of the documents are written in Japanese language. Let’s see now the Japanese quantum computing market.
Quantum annealing and Gate model
In Japan now 3–4 startups working on quantum annealing and 2 are working on universal gate model quantum computing.
Mr.Nishimori and Mr.Kadowaki is famous for their first theory on quantum annealing and most business person has perspective of solving combinatorial optimization problem using quantum computer or quantum annealer.
Most of the startups are working on combinatorial optimization problem for social problems including traffic flow or improvement of manufacturing in factory. Especially there are a lot of car company in Japan now working hardly on self-driving cars, they are all researching on quantum computing for its future use.
On the universal model, the flagship project lead by MEXT Japanese ministry is now working on transmon superconducting qubit and Mr. Nakamura from Riken/Univ. of Tokyo is working on the hardware, and some startup is doing business on gate model applications especially on quantum chemistry.
Annealer on simulator
Actually inside Japan, NEC is now working on the actual superconducting flux qubit for quantum annealer. NTT is working on coherent ising machine on the hybrid system of lazer network and FPGA.
Fujitsu released Digital Annealer which is an ASIC processor to solve simulated annealing based ising model simulations. Hitachi released similar processor based on CMOS called CMOS Annealer.
Toshiba also published their first GPU or FPGA based quantum-inspired algorithm called Simulated Bifurcation Algorithm, simulating the adiabatic process of quantum machine.
Education
Japanese universities and students are very familiar to physics and quantum computing. Among business companies we can easily find person who graduated from the university major in physics.
Many university course is now providing education on quantum mechanics and quantum informations. Of course online education course is also a good choice for learn quantum computing at home.
SDKs
Some startups are making their own SDK or simulators. Basically the most popular in Japan is now Qiskit provided by IBM. And the other hand Microsoft Q# is also a popular tool for person who is working on windows developer community.
Especially for quantum chemistry, people is using OpenFermion for the BK/JW transformation for the post process of the quantum simulations.
Now most of Japanese company which provide classical annealer “not” providing SDK for users, people usually using D-Wave Ocean SDK for annaler and ising model simualtions.
Business
In Japan for quantum computing business a lot of companies is doing PoC project on quantum annealer on combinatorial optimization or universal model on quantum chemistry. Some company is now started to invest long term investment on quantum computing application making team inside their company.
Also many company is now using D-Wave machine or IBM machine. A lot of books about quantum computing published. And everyday we see TV/Newspaper/Magazine topics about quantum computing.
Finance, Material Industry, Car Manufacturing, Web Advertisement and … many are now paying for quantum computing in Japanese market.
