Sitting in a swivel chair in a hotel conference room, Victor Peng stares out the window at the Chicago River with a look of amazement. The 66-year-old CEO of PsiQuantum, the anchor tenant of the planned 128-acre Illinois Quantum & Microelectronics Park in South Chicago, has been at the forefront of technological innovation for more than 40 years. Previously the CEO of Xilinx, he was a leading figure in the semiconductor industry, which has been a monumental force in the advent of AI. But even he is surprised that the realization of quantum computing is nearly here.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore than a decade ago, I remember talking to my chief technology officer and asking about quantum,\u201d Peng says. \u201cYou know, \u2018Are we getting close?\u2019 He said, \u2018We should keep an eye on it, but we\u2019ve still got some time.\u2019 And lo and behold, it\u2019s about time.\u201d<\/p>\n
By leveraging quantum mechanics, this type of computing accelerates processing speeds and technological progress exponentially. And South Chicago could be ground zero for it, as PsiQuantum, based in Palo Alto, California, plans to build what it describes as the \u201cfirst commercially useful quantum computer\u201d there.<\/p>\n
Twenty years ago, I couldn\u2019t have foreseen that my phone would be able to do everything for me. What kind of impact will quantum computing someday have on our daily lives?<\/strong><\/p>\n Over time, it will affect pretty much every aspect. Getting to more effective drugs sooner, understanding how certain proteins in our bodies work, finding alternatives to rare earth minerals and more sources of energy, finding better and more effective fertilizer\u2009\u2014\u2009understanding all of that at a very detailed level is what quantum can do for us. That level of insight is going to increase humankind\u2019s knowledge. It sounds profound. It is profound. Over time there will be businesses and things we can\u2019t even imagine. It also could improve AI, because it creates a tremendous amount of detailed data, and, as we all know, AI gets better if you give it good data. When I started in the industry in my early 20s, it was only mainframes. It wasn\u2019t even the PC yet. You didn\u2019t have computers in your cars, home, and dishwasher. I\u2019m not saying you\u2019re going to have a quantum computer in your phone, but the innovations will affect everything.<\/p>\n Your career has been centered around classical computing, working with CPUs and GPUs. Does that experience have any bearing on quantum computing?<\/strong><\/p>\n Quantum is a very different form of computing, which is one of the things I find so exciting about it, but it\u2019s still computing. Right now it seems like a specialized thing, but the reality is, it has to work with classical computing. So you need to set up the problem, then you run things on the quantum computer, then you need to interpret it.<\/p>\n What will this quantum computer look like?<\/strong><\/p>\n Think of it as [the equivalent of] a modest-sized data center, not these gigantic AI data centers you hear that are gigawatts or multiple gigawatts. We\u2019re talking about tens of megawatts. We\u2019re in such early days that, in the future, you\u2019re going to see these things shrink and get denser. Your phone is probably 10,000 times more powerful than early computers, and you can carry that in your pocket. You\u2019ll also see them expand, depending on what types of problems you\u2019re trying to solve.<\/p>\n A supercomputer is about the size of a basketball court. Will this be that big?<\/strong><\/p>\n Not as big as a football field, but bigger than a basketball court.<\/p>\n What do you have to do differently when you build a quantum computer as opposed to a traditional computer?<\/strong><\/p>\n Super-advanced engineering. We\u2019ve had to basically help create things that are well beyond the state of the art. Precision machinery, cryogenics, photonics, even materials.<\/p>\n \u201cPhotonics\u201d sounds like science fiction. What is that?<\/strong><\/p>\n It sounds fancy, but it\u2019s just light. We\u2019re leveraging technology that\u2019s been around for decades. We\u2019re using photonic chips, which use light in different ways.<\/p>\n One of the advances of quantum computing will be speed. Right now we\u2019re getting answers to things seemingly instantaneously. How can you get faster than that?<\/strong><\/p>\n For certain classes of problems, quantum computing could do things that would take traditional computing literally centuries. So in that sense, it\u2019s really fast. But not for every problem.<\/p>\n Why not?<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s not something that runs a spreadsheet. There\u2019s stuff that traditional computing can do that quantum computing really isn\u2019t suited for.<\/p>\n \u202fPresident Trump recently signed executive orders to accelerate quantum computing development, and he did this with the mission of a quantum machine capable of scientific research by 2028, less than two years away. Are we going to get there?<\/strong><\/p>\n He\u2019s trying to drive the industry as hard as it can to do something. It\u2019s not just a race about hardware. There\u2019s a lot of algorithmic development. There\u2019s also development in error correction, because quantum computers are quite sensitive to environments. If you put that all together, yeah, super challenging, but everybody\u2019s game for that.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to make sure we don\u2019t disenfranchise the local community. We want them to benefit from this, and we need the workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n So you won\u2019t put a date on it?<\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019re getting close\u2009\u2014\u2009a year and a half isn\u2019t far off.<\/p>\n \u202fIQMP will be on the site of the former U.S. Steel South Works, which led to severe brownfield contamination. When people hear about a new technology, it\u2019s reasonable for them to question its environmental impact. How will the IQMP be different?<\/strong><\/p>\n A quantum computer uses 100 times less power than a data center. It doesn\u2019t use much water at all; a golf course uses much more water. It doesn\u2019t make any noise. From a sustainability perspective, people shouldn\u2019t be worried.<\/p>\n South Chicago has experienced decades of disinvestment. What will this bring to it?<\/strong><\/p>\n We want to make sure we don\u2019t disenfranchise the local community. We want them to benefit from this, and we need the workforce. There is partnership and a long view on this, and we\u2019ll pay dividends for generations if we do that. I started from very modest means. We didn\u2019t have any money growing up in New York City. I went to all public schools. I commuted to my magnet high school. And what technology has done for me in my lifetime is just phenomenal. That\u2019s what we\u2019re committed to trying to do here in Chicago.<\/p>\n Could South Chicago become the next Silicon Valley?<\/strong><\/p>\n That is a vision that all of us share. This really will be a whole ecosystem for quantum and microelectronics. It\u2019s early stages in the journey, but all the partners we work with\u2009\u2014\u2009public-private partnerships, research universities, state and city colleges\u2009\u2014\u2009share that mission.<\/p>\n Are you planning on moving here once this facility is completed, or are you going to stay in the Bay Area?<\/strong><\/p>\n My wife, kids, and grandkids are in the Bay Area. My wife has been patient enough for me to come out of retirement to do this gig. If I said we\u2019re moving everybody, patience might run out.<\/p>\n What have been your favorite things about Chicago so far?<\/strong><\/p>\n Chicago\u2019s got a great character and its own nature, which I love. We went to a White Sox game. That was fun.<\/p>\n So you\u2019re saying you\u2019re a Sox fan?<\/strong><\/p>\n I gotta be careful. I will say that you gotta keep the Bears here. It\u2019s crazy to think about them someplace else.<\/p>\n Tal Rosenberg is a freelance writer for Chicago magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sitting in a swivel chair in a hotel conference room, Victor Peng stares out the window at the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1012469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[25],"tags":[691,960,45590,492,139224,405231,4588,159,52460,405232,67,132,68,405230],"class_list":["post-1012468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-ai","tag-chicago","tag-photonics","tag-physics","tag-psiquantum","tag-quantum-microelectronics-park","tag-quantum-computer","tag-science","tag-south-chicago","tag-u-s-steel-south-works","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-victor-peng"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1012468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1012469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1012468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1012468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1012468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n