Convergence Accelerator Phase I: Project Scoping Workshop (PSW) on Quantum Interconnects (QuIC)

该研讨会将于2019年秋季举办，将汇集来自学术界和工业界的主要利益相关者。与会者将讨论量子互连（QuIC）当前面临的挑战，克服这些挑战的机会，并将制定一条实现近期进展的前进道路。研讨会的具体目标是确定量子互连领域的现实可交付成果，包括：i）未来2-5年内可以开发的原型，以及ii）在未来5年内评估它们所需的测试床。我们建议组织研讨会，将学术界、工业界和政府的关键利益相关者聚集在一起，负责回答以下问题：QuIC技术带来的社会影响是什么？谁将从我们的工作中受益？最有前途的QuIC平台是什么？它们多久能从实验室转化为“真实的世界”环境？这些QuIC平台的主要实验和理论挑战是什么？我们如何解决这些挑战？它们是否提出了有趣的科学或工程问题，需要学术界、工业界和政府之间的融合研究和伙伴关系？是否需要平台特定或通用算法和软件开发？QuIC社区在持续的财政支持、所需的额外技术专长、劳动力/学生培训等方面有哪些需求？ 为了回答这些问题并评估QuIC的潜力，研讨会将吸引不同科学和工程学科的参与，包括材料科学家，物理学家，电子和光子电路设计师，控制和信息理论专家，计算机科学家，软件工程师，该研讨会将邀请工业界和学术界参与传统互连发展的主要参与者参加（主要是光学的）对于开发高性能计算（HPC）系统和现代数据中心至关重要。重要的是，该项目推进了未来NSF投资十大理念中的两个目标：“量子飞跃”（QL）和“增长融合研究”（GCR）。这项活动还推进了国家量子计划（NQI）的目标，这是一个协调的多机构计划，旨在支持量子信息科学（QIS）的研究和培训。讲习班的成果将是一份由所有讲习班参与者共同撰写的白色文件，并向公众提供。该白色文件将概述研讨会关于与QuIC相关的社区优先事项的立场。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

This workshop will be organized in Fall 2019 and will bring together key stakeholders from academia and industry. The participants will discuss current challenges in Quantum Interconnects (QuIC), opportunities to overcome those challenges, and will map out a path forward to enable near-term progress. The specific aim of the workshop is to identify realistic deliverables in the area of Quantum Interconnects, including: i) Prototypes that could be developed in the next 2-5 years, and ii) Testbeds needed to evaluate them in the following 5 years.We propose to organize the workshop that will bring together key stakeholders from academia, industry and government with the charge to answer the following questions: What is the societal impact offered by QuIC technology? Who will benefit from our work? What are the most promising QuIC platforms and how soon can they to be translated from lab to "real world" environments? What are the main experimental and theoretical challenges of these QuIC platforms, and how we can address them? Do they pose interesting scientific or engineering questions that require convergent research and partnership between academia, industry and government? Are there needs for platform specific or generalized algorithm and software development? What are the needs of QuIC community in terms of sustained financial support, additional technical expertise required, workforce/ student training, etc? To answer these questions and evaluate the potential of QuIC, the workshop will draw participation from different scientific and engineering disciplines including material scientists, physicists, electronic and photonic circuit designers, control and information theory experts, computer scientists, software engineers, and so on.The workshop will involve key players from both industry and academia involved in the development of classical interconnects (largely optical) crucial to the development high performance computing (HPC) systems and modern data centers. Importantly, this project advances the objectives of two of Ten Big Ideas for Future NSF Investments: "Quantum Leap" (QL) and "Growing Convergent Research" (GCR). This activity also advances objectives of the National Quantum Initiative (NQI), a coordinated multiagency program to support research and training in Quantum Information Science (QIS). The outcome of the workshop will be a white paper co-authored by all workshop participants and made available to the public. The white paper will outline the Workshop's position regarding community priorities relative to QuIC.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.