Already a leader in AI, Quebec sets its sights on quantum computing

In a grey industrial building in Dorval, a suburb on the island of Montreal, sitting among a sea of other grey industrial buildings, a team of physicists and engineers is tinkering with a machine that is expected to change the field of computing. The machine, a white cylinder hanging inside a suspended metal frame surrounded by piping and the rhythmic chirping of a cooling system, fills nearly an entire room. Inside the drum, chemically frozen to temperatures colder than the vacuum of space, hangs a chandelier-like structure of brass and gold wires. This is MonarQ, a universal quantum computer, one…