2968: ORCA Computing's Breakthrough in Photonic Quantum Computers

[00:00:00] Are you ready to explore the cutting edge world of quantum computing? Well in today's episode of the Tech Talks Daily Podcast, I'm going to dive into the revolutionary technology developed by a company called ORCA Computing.

[00:00:18] My guest's name is Richard Murray, he's the CEO and co-founder of ORCA Computing. It's a company that was spun out of Oxford University but is now making waves in the tech world with their innovative photonic quantum computers.

[00:00:33] But these aren't your typical quantum machines, because they operate at room temperature and promise robust, portable solutions without the need for complex cryogenics. So the big question is how does ORCA's technology stack up against giants like IBM and Google

[00:00:52] and what does this mean for the future of industries ranging from finance to defence? Well we're going to unpack these questions today with Richard Murray. Now obviously hosting a daily tech podcast comes with its challenges and so I'm incredibly grateful to our sponsor for their essential support.

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[00:02:22] So buckle up and hold on tight as I beam your ears all the way to London where Richard's waiting to share his story. So a massive warm welcome to the show. Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do?

[00:02:38] Oh yeah, great to be here. Thanks. So my name's Richard Murray. So I'm the chief executive and co-founder of Orca Computing. And what I do, I mean, I lead the company. I'm an ex-physicist. I'm an ex-lots of different things, ex-physicist, ex-engineer.

[00:02:52] But really, I spend my career at the interface between amazing science and physics and products. And that's landed me in the middle of quantum computing. And already there's so much to unpack there. Ex-physicist, engineer, quantum computing.

[00:03:08] So I've got to ask, could you share that origin story of Orca Computing, which I believe began in Oxford University to becoming a leader in photonic quantum computing? And when I say that out loud, I always want to do a Doc Brown in Back to the Future saying,

[00:03:24] great Scott Miller. Can you tell me more about that origin story? Yeah, absolutely. Maybe just, I mean, just to go back to where I came from to lead me to Orca. So I mean, I spent my whole career, I do have a PhD in quantum.

[00:03:36] So I am more of a physicist than maybe I make out. And I've spent part of my career working in sort of product development, but taking quite early stage science and bringing it through to products. But about 2013, I was involved, I sort of dragged back into UK government.

[00:03:55] So I was sent to work for Innovate UK, which is a sort of a group run by the UK government to start a program called the UK Quantum Technologies Program. So just to imagine back in 2013, quantum was really thought of as quite an early stage science.

[00:04:14] It was very much about exploring the secrets of the universe, you know, fundamental things and things like that. And what was quite ingenious actually is that this program in the UK was set up to recognize that quantum was becoming something that was important to companies.

[00:04:29] So it's something to do with the fact that a lot of the components that are used, a lot of the understanding about systems had reached the level which was now thought to be right for sort of commercialization. So that was sort of the history of quantum.

[00:04:42] And actually, as you probably know, it's really taken off now. So now it's not just the UK, many countries have followed suit, really thinking that quantum and quantum computing are sort of right at the start of something big.

[00:04:55] So I was brought into UK government to run a big program to sort of get companies interested in that. I had a lot of fun, sort of formed government policy and deployed a lot of funding with different companies. And that's where I met...

[00:05:10] So long story short, I'm not the academic behind the company. I was in government, I was sort of absorbing lots of amazing research that other researchers were doing, but it was my job to sort of coordinate everyone and point them in the right direction.

[00:05:23] And thankfully, I was lucky enough to come across a number of really leading academics. And what is astounding is just how many good ideas there are for products coming out of academia.

[00:05:32] And I suppose I was lucky enough at that point to have a few sort of visibility of all those good ideas. And one in particular stood out to me. So it was the research by the other two Walker co-founders, Professor Ian Wormsley and Dr. Josh Nunn.

[00:05:47] They'd been working on networks and quantum memories, sort of exotic components. But what that had led to is them really imagining how you could build a quantum computer quite differently than anyone else had thought possible up until that point.

[00:06:01] So they'd really imagined a way to build a quantum computer from photonics, which is light and networking equipment. And what struck me is that it was something so new in a landscape that quite often isn't there are relatively few genuinely new ideas.

[00:06:19] So I was sort of enamored by this new approach that they had been researching in their labs. And that was at the University of Oxford. And then, you know, about 2018, 2019, we actually decided, OK, this is really cool.

[00:06:33] I said, I mean, this sounds like a technology that I'm interested in committing my time to and joining, starting the company and being committed to the company full time. And I guess the rest is history.

[00:06:46] But it was sort of that amazing moment back in the early days, 18, 19, of sort of hearing about this technology, having heard about a load of different ideas bubbling out of academia. But this one in particular, and the that in my view, the way it could reach commercial

[00:07:02] applications quite quickly, really struck me as something really exciting. And so we all joined forces and started the company in 2019. So that was when Orca Computing was born. I know there is a passionate community about all things quantum computing, especially in

[00:07:17] discussions around what is quantum computing, what isn't, what is exaggerated capabilities and what isn't. So I've got to ask, how did Orca manage to develop this robust, portable quantum computer that is able to operate at room temperature?

[00:07:32] And what is it that makes your photonics platform unique compared to so many other quantum computing approaches and projects out there at the moment? Yeah, it's a really good question. I should probably start by just talking about the photonic approach, so using light to build a quantum computer.

[00:07:48] So that in itself is quite powerful. So light is, I mean, if people don't know how common light is and how important light is to our everyday, you know, you can't get high bandwidth internet traffic.

[00:08:01] You can't download Netflix on your mobile phone without a whole load of optical fibre and photonic technologies working in the background. So light is, I spent my career being fascinated and excited about the potential for photonic technologies in general, and the possibility it has for computing.

[00:08:19] In Orca's case in particular, this amazing breakthrough that Ian and Josh had while working at the University of Oxford was to build quantum computers out of existing networking equipment. So just to sort of help everyone imagine what that looks like, what I mean by networking

[00:08:36] are these stuff called optical fibre, which is basically sort of optical wiring, which carries internet traffic. Very, very standard, you know, there's lengths of it under the road, under any one street at any one time.

[00:08:48] The idea of changing that and developing that into a platform that can accommodate quantum information, so quantum computing, requires quite an ingenious thought process, a number of new components, in our case a quantum memory and other things like that.

[00:09:05] So to answer your question, the thing that makes Orca really unique and allows for us to build these robust portable quantum computers is, I mean, it's quite simple in practice, using technologies, telecoms technologies that are already out there.

[00:09:18] Obviously the reality to make that happen is incredibly complex and technical, but in essence we believe that why not take advantage of this amazing suite of robust components that we already use for the internet, and all we're doing is sort of reimagining those,

[00:09:33] redeploying those into new systems for quantum computing. As I'm sure we'll get on to talk about, that's so refreshing to the community and some of our customers, being able to reimagine quantum computing so it doesn't involve massive, expensive

[00:09:50] and difficult to work with cryogenic fridges, super cool temperatures and exotic environments and things. The ability to deliver quantum computing much more robustly is pretty exciting in itself, if quantum computing by itself wasn't exciting enough, if that makes sense.

[00:10:06] It does, and you mentioned your customers there, and a question I must ask on behalf of business leaders that might be listening, thinking about, hey, what does quantum computing, what's that going to mean to me and my business in the future?

[00:10:18] At the moment, who are your key customers for your quantum computers and what specific needs are they looking to address with this technology? Yeah, it's a mixture. I'd say that our customers sort of fall into one of two categories.

[00:10:31] The first type of customer, and by and large the biggest customer base we have, they're people who already own a lot of computing infrastructure. They might be a high-performance computing center, they might already own many, many computing systems in order to perform big calculations.

[00:10:54] These guys are really the providers of infrastructure, if you like. They're providers of compute to other... Lots of them are surrounded by a community of businesses that then use those high-performance computers to carry out different calculations from weather modeling to financial planning and things like this.

[00:11:13] They're first to these big data centers, these big owners and suppliers of high-performance computing and compute. I think the other type are, of course, the consumers of computing. We quite often look across industries that already rely on cutting-edge compute.

[00:11:33] That might not be obvious to many people, but there are many industries who rely on state-of-the-art computing. The financial markets are one of them, obviously. You need to model the behavior, the future forecast for financial portfolios and things.

[00:11:48] Energy, oil, and gas are another sort of big market for us. Wherever we see a company that's already at the cutting edge of computing, those are the customers that we think, okay, that's cool.

[00:12:01] These are the guys who are going to really take advantage of what quantum offers, which is next-generation computing system, the ability to advance how you carry out current computing. It's one of those two types of customers, we would say.

[00:12:18] When researching Orca Computing, I was also reading that the UK government, particularly the Ministry of Defense, has shown interest in your technology. I'm not sure how much you're going to be able to tell me about that, but are you able

[00:12:30] to elaborate on how they maybe envision using quantum computing in field conditions? The third industry to mention is defense. The defense industry is a big user of high-performance computing for lots of different things.

[00:12:47] The application I'd say that our work has mostly, and one that I can talk about, is one that actually is shared with many business leaders. It's one of optimization. What I mean by that is to say that the Ministry of Defense, like other large organizations,

[00:13:04] it has a lot going on. It has a lot of resources, a lot of assets to coordinate. That might be in a very small time period or over very long time periods. They might have many, many goods, many vehicles carrying goods.

[00:13:19] Those goods have destinations and there's points in time where those destinations have to be connected, if that makes sense. So, big, big logistical network. Trying to perform scenario planning of all of those different assets to meet different things that might happen.

[00:13:38] Also being able to optimize that list of assets and to potentially get efficiency gains in those types of things would be massive for them. Many of the things literally are, okay, we have this one thing that needs to go in this

[00:13:53] number of vehicles and get to these different places. That might sound like a really simple problem to talk about, but it's one of immense computational complexities. Really hard to come up with good or maybe even optimal solutions for those types of problems.

[00:14:10] It just so happens that those are the type of applications where quantum computers and our type of quantum computer are hopefully going to try and help and make those scenarios more optimal or give better scenario planning. So, that's what they'd like to do.

[00:14:27] Of course, what it requires is helping them and us make them more familiar with this complete new way of performing computing. I mean, what a lot of people forget is that we are building a completely new type of computer.

[00:14:42] So, by and large, you can't just apply your existing operating system. It's not just a few new lines of code. It's a fundamental rethink of how you look and how you program computers.

[00:14:53] So, a lot of what we do is sometimes on the application side, okay, you want to do this and we'll help them look at whether you can do that or not. But there's also this massive task to help educate existing users of computing and computer

[00:15:08] scientists within different businesses to take advantage of these completely different computers, which is really cool, really exciting. And with several quantum computing platforms in development, my curiosity naturally leads me to ask you, why should end users or potential customers commit to photonics now instead

[00:15:26] of waiting for another successful platform to emerge? Where do you stand on this? Why should people be excited about photonics? Well, what excites you? Yeah, it's a really good question. And I'm not going to hide from the fact that it's hard to maybe pick a platform because

[00:15:45] if anyone's familiar with quantum computing at the moment, it is sort of a race or there are a number of different platforms to carry out quantum computing on. There's an IBM, they're a superconducting system or a number of different vendors with different physical platforms.

[00:16:03] And sort of making the choice about which platform to pick is hard. And there's no right answer at the moment. And no one knows what will be the ultimate platform that either runs these certain applications the best or all of the applications the best.

[00:16:18] So it's a really good question, why photonics? Well, I think at the end of the day, it relates back to real use cases. And I often advise people, you know, it's really easy to become a bit too much of a physicist when you're thinking about quantum computing.

[00:16:32] We meet loads of people who are like, tell me about the qubits. I really want to know all these details about the qubits and what's happening. But at the end of the day, I mean, I think business leaders really want to know what

[00:16:44] it can do and how far along the platform is in helping someone to do that thing. And I think in particular, our platform and photonics is very far ahead in, for example, delivering systems that could be useful to advance machine learning algorithms to help them make them better.

[00:17:00] So I think it's I mean, the answer is still in the weeds a little bit. And it does require companies and users to sort of do their homework a little bit. But I think on particular use cases such as machine learning and optimization,

[00:17:12] the two I mentioned already, photonics is becoming one of the best platforms to help advance those applications. And so all of a sudden we shift onto user relevant benchmarks rather than talking about qubits.

[00:17:25] So how much better is the algorithm if you adopt this new way of computing and things like that? So I'd say that photonics is probably furthest along in demonstrating value for those specific use cases.

[00:17:37] And maybe just to chip in for a completely different reason, you know, photonics is the only way in my view that you can offer quantum computing in a way that's not going to cost the user tens of millions of dollars.

[00:17:48] So yes, so the unsaid feature of quantum computing is they're really, really expensive at the moment, these systems. And while the price might come down a bit, you know, working with a platform that's based on optical fiber and telecoms, you know, is inherently less exotic, less complex and

[00:18:06] more cost effective to be brutally honest. So often our customers see there's like a reality where we're not going to go out and spend, you know, we're a company at the leading edge of computing, but we're not going to go and spend $60 million with IBM.

[00:18:18] You know, we just don't know, we don't have the value case to support that type of investment. So photonics can sort of very significantly change the landscape, change the business justification, the business dynamics around a purchase, which I think can be a big difference as well to users.

[00:18:35] And error correction and fault tolerance are significant challenges in quantum computing. And I've got to ask, how are you at Orca addressing some of those issues to advance towards a genuinely useful quantum computer? Yeah, so you're right, it is a big challenge.

[00:18:52] And to sort of chip, to explain a slightly lower level why that's the case. I mean, like every computer, in fact, more so than any computer, a quantum computer has errors. So you try and perform a calculation or something and, you know, sometimes your one will become

[00:19:07] a zero, you know, undergo an error, which then compile as you try and that gets worse, the bigger and bigger the algorithm that you're trying to carry out becomes. So all of a sudden you'll reach this point where you're trying to run an algorithm of

[00:19:20] a certain size and you can't run it because the errors are just too, you know, you've just been swamped with errors. So it is a challenge for the whole industry to perform or to generate error corrected quantum systems that don't suffer that problem.

[00:19:36] I mean, Orca addresses that problem because we have an in-house team of error correction people who develop algorithms to perform that error correction piece of work. But I think, you know, so we are working towards the solution which requires much bigger quantum

[00:19:51] computers than we have today, ones that can actually run these larger error correction algorithms. So there is sort of this piece of work that we're doing and lots of other companies are doing to get to that end point.

[00:20:04] But I have to say there's a sort of a bit of a disagreement in the community, but a useful one, about whether you can perform quantum computing without error correction. So what that would mean is you actually find an algorithm that, you know, so short, you

[00:20:18] can run it so quickly that your errors don't have a chance to creep in. So there's a bit of a, you know, a bit of a big discussion in the industry about whether these near-term, these non-error corrected algorithms exist or not.

[00:20:30] We believe that there are lots of use cases such as in machine learning and things that it can run without error correction. The calculation is so short, you don't need error correction. So in our minds, we reach error correction by firstly finding applications that don't require error correction.

[00:20:45] And that might be slightly counterintuitive, but of course that then means that you can start doing stuff today and we can fuel ourselves. We can keep working on things on the way to this point where you build up a larger quantum

[00:20:56] computer and a quantum computer that can run error correction. So it's a good question. I don't know if I've really answered your question, what you really asked there, but all of us, I think, see that it is the holy grail of quantum computing because once you

[00:21:09] do run error correction, you can start undertaking these calculations that are completely beyond what we can do today. But just in my view, to get there, you need these sort of first non-error corrected algorithms

[00:21:22] to be built and to be demonstrated and to be useful on the way to that holy grail point in the future. Yeah, that's fantastic. It really sheds a different light on it. It's certainly got me thinking about the future with that.

[00:21:36] And also, again, after researching you, your recent acquisition of the integrated photonics division of GXC, that almost also feels like a significant move. So a question I've got to ask, how is that acquisition enhancing your capabilities at Orko and strategic positioning?

[00:21:53] Is there anything you can share around that too? Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. I mean, I'll just start with the fact that we're not a huge company. We're a Series A funded company and also a UK company, of course.

[00:22:05] And so sort of the big move that you're right in implying we made is to acquire a really leading company based in Austin, in Texas, and make those, acquire that company and make them part of the Orko family is really exciting for us.

[00:22:21] Many of your listeners might not care about this, but I for one really believe that UK companies can do this type of thing. Perception amongst the media is they can't and it's always the other way around.

[00:22:30] But yeah, happy to show that UK companies can be dynamic and do those types of things, which is really cool. And what the acquisition brings us is the opportunity to bring in house a lot of really exciting semiconductor development.

[00:22:46] So this team that we acquired, they were doing this work on a particular type of chips, semiconductors, particularly that relate to being able to control light. So it's quite different from what most people think of when they think of semiconductors. These aren't chips that control electronics.

[00:23:01] There are sort of new class of semiconductors that control light. So it's a really fascinating and exciting technology field that I believe in. But we've been partnering with different companies to help us do that. But the acquisition really firstly allows us access to some really world leading minds

[00:23:18] doing that stuff and able to also fabricate the chips themselves, but also to really align that with what we're trying to do to build up this sort of super exciting semiconductor platform for light that helps us.

[00:23:32] I mean, what that means, we bring that in and that essentially becomes a component that we include within our system to really advance what we're doing into the world of more and more performing quantum computers, if that makes sense.

[00:23:47] Well, a big thank you for taking the time to demystify the world of quantum computing and sharing your insights with everyone listening today. But before I let you go, I wonder if you'd leave everyone listening with one final gift,

[00:24:00] and that is we have an Amazon wish list where I always ask my guests if there's anything, any book that has inspired them, means something to them or something they just recommend that people listening in interest in this subject would like to check out.

[00:24:12] All I'm going to ask you is what would you like to leave everyone listening with and why? What I just said, what a fantastic opportunity to leave this gift, because it's not often you get to talk about something that's meant so much to you.

[00:24:24] So I think it would be wrong of me not to mention this one book that's been so pivotal in my life. So actually, to be honest, back to my own history, I was almost going to be an engineer.

[00:24:35] I was about to embark on a career and a degree in engineering. And then I read this book, and the book is Mr. Tompkins in paperback by an author called George Gamow. So it is a physics book.

[00:24:47] But it's an amazing story. This author basically describes someone falls asleep and they awake in this world where the speed of light is 30 miles an hour and Planck's constant is one. And what that means and what the author does is basically describe this world where you live and

[00:25:03] breathe the effects of quantum mechanics, which we talk about but no one sees because they're so minute. And you live and breathe the world of relativity, which we have in our world,

[00:25:12] but no one sees because the speed of light is so vast. So this amazing book sort of describes living in this world where all these physical constants are such that you can actually see around you what quantum mechanics is and what relativity is.

[00:25:27] It was important to me because it made me decide that I really want to do physics, which has obviously been the direction I've taken throughout the rest of my life. And it's not a book full of equations. It's not a Stephen Hawking challenge to get through. It's an

[00:25:40] enlightening, fantastic book, which just so happens to reflect reality. So it sort of gives you that education about what relativity and quantum is without reading a bunch of equations. So I'd thoroughly recommend it. It's been one of the... I couldn't recommend it more.

[00:25:54] It's been a great book for me to have had. Wow. High praise indeed. I'll get that added straight to our Amazon wishlist. And for anybody just interested in learning more about Orca Computing and quantum computing and everything that you're working on and we've discussed today,

[00:26:09] is there anywhere in particular you'd like to point everyone? Well, just as we've got a website, so www.orcacomputing.com. It's probably the best home for all of the stuff that you'd want to see. And there are offshoots there to our

[00:26:25] LinkedIn profile and our YouTube page and things like that, but I'd start with the website. Well, we covered so much there in our conversation from how Orca has sold five quantum computers

[00:26:35] around the world in the last two years, who is buying them and why now, and also how you're making photonics as a platform stand out against competing platforms and how you're dealing with

[00:26:46] that error correction and fault tolerance issues that seem to be or have been a drag on reaching a useful quantum computer in the past. So many big talking points, I'd love to hear more about what the listeners thought and the passion of quantum computing, but more than anything,

[00:27:00] just thank you for bringing it all to life tonight. My absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me. So that wraps up today's conversation with Richard Murray from Orca Computing. And together we journeyed through the world of photonic quantum computing. We've explored its

[00:27:15] practical applications, discussed how this technology is set to transform a variety of industries. But what are your thoughts on the future of quantum computing and indeed Orca's approach to making it more accessible and practical? This is where I'd love to hear from you. Please email me techblogwriteroutlook.comxlinkedininstagramjustatneilchugh

[00:27:40] Send me a message. I'd love to carry on this conversation and hear more insightful discussions with yourself as well. So please keep questioning, keep exploring and let's continue to uncover the technologies that are shaping our future.

[00:27:56] And if you enjoyed yourself today and this was your first time listening, don't forget to subscribe to Tech Talks Daily. Leave us a rating and review if it's on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen because those ratings and reviews are like lifeblood in

[00:28:10] convincing the algorithms that this is a show worth listening to. So thank you for listening today and hopefully you'll join me again tomorrow where I've already got another guest lined up. So thank you for listening as always and until next time, don't be a stranger.