Pure Storages revenues grew 23 per cent year-over-year in its its latest quarter and it expects a growth acceleration next quarter, with an eight-figure hyperscaler deal and the COVID recovery gathering pace.
Revenues were $498.8 million in the quarter ended 1 August 2021, with a loss of $45.3 million, compared to the year-ago loss of $65 million. It was the highest second-quarter revenue in Pures history, as product and subscription sales both accelerated.
Chairman and CEO Charles Giancarlo sounded ecstatic in his prepared remarks: Pure had an outstanding Q2! As a growing, share-taking company, we expect every quarter to be record breaking, but this quarter was extraordinary. Sales, revenue and profitability were well above expectations [and] we had the highest Q2 operating profit in our history.
He was keen to tell investors that Pure had made the right choices: We predicted that Pures growth would accelerate as businesses adjusted to the COVID environment. We believe that our growth will be even stronger as businesses return to an in-office environment. We estimated that this would start this past Q2, and we are obviously very pleased with the results.
He believes that the current environment enables us to return to our historical double-digit growth rates, with increasing profitability, but he didnt forecast when Pure would make a profit. He expects continued improvements quarter by quarter in our operating profit margins.
On a year-over-year basis:
Pure gained 380 new customers in the quarter, ten per cent year-over-year growth, taking its total customer count, we calculate, to 9647. Sales to large enterprises were more than 50 per cent of sales with the top ten customers spending more than $100 million in the quarter.
The outlook for Q3 is $530 million, 29 per cent higher than a year ago. This guidance includes revenue Pure expects to recognise in connection with a more than $10 million sale of the QLC flash-based FlashArray//C to one of the top ten hyper-scalers. Full fiscal 2022 year revenue is forecast to be $2.04 billion, up 21 per cent.
Pure feels comfortable it can grow revenues at more than 20 per cent for the foreseeable future.
In the earnings call Giancarlo said that the hyperscaler FlashArray//C sale was won against traditional magnetic disk based on our high performance, small space and power footprint and superior total cost of ownership.
Answering about the prospects of this win hesaid: Its a part of their overall operations. we do feel that this is sustainable both in the sense of continuing with this customer, as well aswe think its the beginning of seeing other similarly situated hyperscale customers starting to look at flash as a real alternative.
As you may know, most of the hyperscalers, the vast majority of what they store, they store on disk. They may have a little bit of flash in their servers, but for the most part, all storage is on disk. And we think this is the beginning of breaking that structure. We finally have the kind of price performance that can really compete within the disk market.
He added: the last bastion of mostly disk data centre right now is actually in the cloud. And so it represents a great opportunity for us.
CTO Rob Lee (see below) said: FlashArray//C [is] very price competitive up to 30 per cent price advantage in some cases price is one element of the equation but all of the other attributes and benefits we are able to bring from flash, such as the performance, such as power, cooling savings, footprint savings, those are all very meaningful across the board. But at the hyperscale, they become super, super meaningful, right? And so, as we look at, for example, this customer, FlashArray//C was the only product that can meet their needs, without them having to go build new data centres.
Giancarlo commented in the outlook: We are very pleased with what were seeing in terms of the Q3 outlook and the idea that, were driving almost 30 per cent growth next year, with the opportunity we highlighted on FlashArray//C.
This hyperscaler FlashArray//C sale was not the first to a hyperscaler customer, just a very big single sale. Giancarlo also said it is something thats easily transferable to other hyperscalers.
Rob Lee becomes Pures CTO with the previous incumbent, co-founder John Cosgrove, becoming Chief Visionary Officer a full time role, with Lee reporting to him. According to the companys leadership web page, Cosgrove is responsible for developing and executing Pures global technical strategy while Lee, in an apparently overlapping role, looks at global technology strategy, and identifying new innovation (sic) and market expansion opportunities for Pure That sounds like two people mostly doing the same thing.
The trial successfully demonstrated, according to Verizon, that it is possible to replace current security processes with protocols that are quantum-proof.
To protect our private communications from future attacks by quantum computers, Verizon is trialing the use of next-generation cryptography keys to protect the virtual private networks (VPNs) that are used every day by companies around the world to prevent hacking.
Verizon implemented what it describes as a "quantum-safe" VPN between one of the company's labs in London in the UK and a US-based center in Ashburn, Virginia, using encryption keys that were generated thanks to post-quantum cryptography methods meaning that they are robust enough to withstand attacks from a quantum computer.
According to Verizon, the trial successfully demonstrated that it is possible to replace current security processes with protocols that are quantum-proof.
VPNs are a common security tool used to protect connections made over the internet, by creating a private network from a public internet connection. When a user browses the web with a VPN, all of their data is redirected through a specifically configured remote server run by the VPN host, which acts as a filter that encrypts the information.
This means that the user's IP address and any of their online activities, from sending emails to paying bills, come out as gibberish to potential hackers even on insecure networks like public WiFi, where eavesdropping is much easier.
Especially in the last few months, which have seen many employees switching to full-time working from home,VPNs have become an increasingly popular tool to ensure privacy and security on the internet.
The technology, however, is based on cryptography protocols that are not un-hackable. To encrypt data, VPN hosts use encryption keys that are generated by well-established algorithms such as RSA (RivestShamirAdleman). The difficulty of cracking the key, and therefore of reading the data, is directly linked to the algorithm's ability to create as complicated a key as possible.
In other words, encryption protocols as we know them are essentially a huge math problem for hackers to solve. With existing computers, cracking the equation is extremely difficult, which is why VPNs, for now, are still a secure solution. But quantum computers are expected to bring about huge amounts of extra computing power and with that, the ability to hack any cryptography key in minutes.
"A lot of secure communications rely on algorithms which have been very successful in offering secure cryptography keys for decades," Venkata Josyula, the director of technology at Verizon, tells ZDNet. "But there is enough research out there saying that these can be broken when there is a quantum computer available at a certain capacity. When that is available, you want to be protecting your entire VPN infrastructure."
One approach that researchers are working on consists ofdeveloping algorithms that can generate keys that are too difficult to hack, even with a quantum computer. This area of research is known as post-quantum cryptography, and is particularly sought after by governments around the world.
In the US, for example, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launched a global research effort in 2016 calling on researchers to submit ideas for algorithms that would be less susceptible to a quantum attack. A few months ago, the organization selected a group of 15 algorithms that showed the most promise.
"NIST is leading a standardization process, but we didn't want to wait for that to be complete because getting cryptography to change across the globe is a pretty daunting task," says Josyula. "It could take 10 or even 20 years, so we wanted to get into this early to figure out the implications."
Verizon has significant amounts of VPN infrastructure and the company sells VPN products, which is why the team started investigating how to start enabling post-quantum cryptography right now and in existing services, Josyula adds.
One of the 15 algorithms identified by NIST, called Saber, was selected for the test. Saber generated quantum-safe cryptography keys that were delivered to the endpoints in London and Ashburn of a typical IPsec VPN through an extra layer of infrastructure, which was provided by a third-party vendor.
Whether Saber makes it to the final rounds of NIST's standardization process, in this case, doesn't matter, explains Josyula. "We tried Saber here, but we will be trying others. We are able to switch from one algorithm to the other. We want to have that flexibility, to be able to adapt in line with the process of standardization."
In other words, Verizon's test has shown that it is possible to implement post-quantum cryptography candidates on infrastructure links now, with the ability to migrate as needed between different candidates for quantum-proof algorithms.
This is important because, although a large-scale quantum computer could be more than a decade away, there is still a chance that the data that is currently encrypted with existing cryptography protocols is at risk.
The threat is known as "harvest now, decrypt later" and refers to the possibility that hackers could collect huge amounts of encrypted data and sit on it while they wait for a quantum computer to come along that could read all the information.
"If it's your Amazon shopping cart, you may not care if someone gets to see it in ten years," says Josyula. "But you can extend this to your bank account, personal number, and all the way to government secrets. It's about how far into the future you see value for the data that you own and some of these have very long lifetimes."
For this type of data, it is important to start thinking about long-term security now, which includes the risk posed by quantum computers.
A quantum-safe VPN could be a good start even though, as Josyula explains, many elements still need to be smoothed out. For example, Verizon still relied on standard mechanisms in its trial to deliver quantum-proof keys to the VPN end-points. This might be a sticking point, if it turns out that this phase of the process is not invulnerable to quantum attack.
The idea, however, is to take proactive steps to prepare, instead of waiting for the worst-case scenario to happen. Connecting London to Ashburn was a first step, and Verizon is now looking at extending its quantum-safe VPN to other locations.
TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sumitomo Corporation Quantum Transformation (QX) Project will present at the IEEE Quantum AI Sustainability Symposium on September 1st, 2021. The QX Project was launched in March 2021 by Sumitomo Corporation, a global Fortune 500 trading and investment company, with the intent to provide new value to society by applying quantum computing technology to the wide-ranging industries in which the company operates. This is the worlds first project that defines Quantum Transformation (QX) as the next social paradigm shift, beyond Digital Transformation (DX).
The founder and head of the QX Project, Masayoshi Terabe, will present about the vision and activities of QX at the IEEE Quantum AI Sustainability Symposium. The organizer IEEE is the world's largest technical professional organization for the advancement of technology. In this talk, he will show how quantum computing can contribute to sustainability. For example, he will introduce the Quantum Sky project, which is a pilot experiment for developing flight routes for numerous air mobility vehicles by quantum computing. Also you can find other concepts like Quantum Smart City and Quantum Energy Management.
The objective of the QX Project is to create new value to the society by combining vast business fields of Sumitomo Corporation throughout its more than 900 consolidated companies, from underground to space, and an extensive number of business partners around the world.
A broad and deep ecosystem is necessary to achieve QX. This is because combining a wide range of technologies, not limited to quantum, and working with a crossover of various industries, is essential. If you are interested in this project, lets take on the challenge of creating a new business, and a new society together!
A WISE PROVERB suggests not putting all your eggs in one basket. Over recent decades, however, physicists have failed to follow that wisdom. The 20th centuryand, indeed, the 19th before itwere periods of triumph for them. They transformed understanding of the material universe and thus peoples ability to manipulate the world around them. Modernity could not exist without the knowledge won by physicists over those two centuries.
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In exchange, the world has given them expensive toys to play with. The most recent of these, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which occupies a 27km-circumference tunnel near Geneva and cost $6bn, opened for business in 2008. It quickly found a long-predicted elementary particle, the Higgs boson, that was a hangover from calculations done in the 1960s. It then embarked on its real purpose, to search for a phenomenon called Supersymmetry.
This theory, devised in the 1970s and known as Susy for short, is the all-containing basket into which particle physicss eggs have until recently been placed. Of itself, it would eliminate many arbitrary mathematical assumptions needed for the proper working of what is known as the Standard Model of particle physics. But it is also the vanguard of a deeper hypothesis, string theory, which is intended to synthesise the Standard Model with Einsteins general theory of relativity. Einsteins theory explains gravity. The Standard Model explains the other three fundamental forceselectromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forcesand their associated particles. Both describe their particular provinces of reality well. But they do not connect together. String theory would connect them, and thus provide a so-called theory of everything.
String theory proposes that the universe is composed of minuscule objects which vibrate in the manner of the strings of a musical instrument. Like such strings, they have resonant frequencies and harmonics. These various vibrational modes, string theorists contend, correspond to various fundamental particles. Such particles include all of those already observed as part of the Standard Model, the further particles predicted by Susy, which posits that the Standard Models mathematical fragility will go away if each of that models particles has a heavier supersymmetric partner particle, or sparticle, and also particles called gravitons, which are needed to tie the force of gravity into any unified theory, but are not predicted by relativity.
But, no Susy, no string theory. And, 13 years after the LHC opened, no sparticles have shown up. Even two as-yet-unexplained results announced earlier this year (one from the LHC and one from a smaller machine) offer no evidence directly supporting Susy. Many physicists thus worry they have been on a wild-goose chase.
They have good reason to be nervous. String theory already comes with a disturbing conceptual price tagthat of adding six (or in one version seven) extra dimensions to the universe, over and above the four familiar ones (three of space and one of time). It also describes about 10500 possible universes, only one of which matches the universe in which human beings live. Accepting all that is challenging enough. Without Susy, though, string theory goes bananas. The number of dimensions balloons to 26. The theory also loses the ability to describe most of the Standard Models particles. And it implies the existence of weird stuff such as particles called tachyons that move faster than light and are thus incompatible with the theory of relativity. Without Susy, string theory thus looks pretty-much dead as a theory of everything. Which, if true, clears the field for non-string theories of everything.
The names of many of these do, it must be conceded, torture the English language. They include causal dynamical triangulation, asymptotically safe gravity, loop quantum gravity and the amplituhedron formulation of quantum theory. But at the moment the bookies favourite for unifying relativity and the Standard Model is something called entropic gravity.
Entropy is a measure of a systems disorder. Famously, the second law of thermodynamics asserts that it increases with time (ie, things have a tendency to get messier as they get older). What that has to do with a theory of gravity, let alone of everything, is not, perhaps, immediately obvious. But the link is black holes. These are objects which have such strong gravitational fields that even light cannot escape from them. They are predicted by the mathematics of general relativity. And even though Einstein remained sceptical about their actual existence until the day he died in 1955, subsequent observations have shown that they are indeed real. But they are not black.
In 1974 Stephen Hawking, of Cambridge University, showed that quantum effects at a black holes boundary allow it to radiate particlesespecially photons, which are the particles of electromagnetic radiation, including light. This has peculiar consequences. Photons carry radiant heat, so something which emits them has a temperature. And, from its temperature and mass, it is possible to calculate a black holes entropy. This matters because, when all these variables are plugged into the first law of thermodynamics, which states that energy can be neither created nor destroyed, only transformed from one form (say, heat) into another (say, mechanical work), what pops out are Einsteins equations of general relativity.
That relationship was discovered in 2010 by Erik Verlinde of Amsterdam University. It has serious implications. The laws of thermodynamics rely on statistical mechanics. They involve properties (temperature, entropy and so on) which emerge from probabilistic descriptions of the behaviour of the underlying particles involved. These are also the particles described by quantum mechanics, the mathematical theory which underpins the Standard Model. That Einsteins equations can be rewritten thermodynamically implies that space and time are also emergent properties of this deeper microscopic picture. The existing forms of quantum mechanics and relativity thus do indeed both seem derivable in principle from some deeper theory that describes the underlying fabric of the universe.
String theory is not so derivable. Strings are not fundamental enough entities. But entropic gravity claims to describe the very nature of space and timeor, to use Einsteinian terminology, spacetime. It asserts this is woven from filaments of quantum entanglement linking every particle in the cosmos.
The idea of quantum entanglement, another phenomenon pooh-poohed by Einstein that turned out to be true, goes back to 1935. It is that the properties of two or more objects can be correlated (entangled) in a way which means they cannot be described independently. This leads to weird effects. In particular, it means that two entangled particles can appear to influence each others behaviour instantaneously even when they are far apart. Einstein dubbed this spooky action at a distance, because it seems to violate the premise of relativity theory that, in the speed of light, the universe has a speed limit.
As with black holes, Einstein did not live long enough to see himself proved wrong. Experiments have nevertheless shown he was. Entanglement is real, and does not violate relativity because although the influence of one particle on another can be instantaneous there is no way to use the effect to pass information faster than light-speed. And, in the past five years, Brian Swingle of Harvard University and Sean Carroll of the California Institute of Technology have begun building models of what Dr Verlindes ideas might mean in practice, using ideas from quantum information theory. Their approach employs bits of quantum information (so-called qubits) to stand in for the entangled particles. The result is a simple but informative analogue of spacetime.
Qubits, the quantum equivalent of classical bitsthe ones and zeros on which regular computing is builtwill be familiar to those who follow the field of quantum computing. They are the basis of quantum information theory. Two properties distinguish qubits from the regular sort. First, they can be placed in a state of superposition, representing both a one and a zero at the same time. Second, several qubits can become entangled. Together, these properties let quantum computers accomplish feats such as performing multiple calculations at once, or completing certain classes of calculation in a sensible amount of time, that are difficult or impossible for a regular computer.
And because of their entanglement qubits can also, according to Dr Swingle and Dr Carroll, be used as stand-ins for how reality works. More closely entangled qubits represent particles at points in spacetime that are closer together. So far, quantum computers being a work in progress, this modelling can be done only with mathematical representations of qubits. These do, though, seem to obey the equations of general relativity. That supports entropic-gravity-theorys claims.
All of this modelling puts entropic gravity in pole position to replace strings as the long-sought theory of everything. But the idea that spacetime is an emergent property of the universe rather than being fundamental to it has a disturbing consequence. It blurs the nature of causality.
In the picture built by entropic gravity, spacetime is a superposition of multiple states. It is this which muddies causality. The branch of maths that best describes spacetime is a form of geometry that has four axes at right angles to each other instead of the more familiar three. The fourth represents time, so, like the position of objects, the order of events in spacetime is determined geometrically. If different geometric arrangements are superposed, as entropic gravity requires, it can therefore sometimes happen that the statements A causes B and B causes A are both true.
This is not mere speculation. In 2016 Giulia Rubino of the University of Bristol, in England, constructed an experiment involving polarised photons and prisms which achieved exactly that. This spells trouble for those who have old-fashioned notions about causalitys nature.
However, Lucien Hardy of the Perimeter Institute, in Canada, has discovered a way to reformulate the laws of quantum mechanics to get around this. In his view, causality as commonly perceived is like data compression in computing: it is a concept that gives you more bang for your buck. With a little bit of information about the present, causality can infer a lot about the futurecompressing the amount of information needed to capture the details of a physical system in time.
But causality, Dr Hardy thinks, may not be the only way to describe such correlations. Instead, he has invented a general method for building descriptions of the patterns in correlations from scratch. This method, which he calls the causaloid framework, tends to reproduce causality but it does not assume it, and he has used it to reformulate both quantum theory (in 2005) and general relativity (in 2016). Causaloid maths is not a theory of everything. But there is a good chance that if and when such a theory is found, causaloid principles will be needed to describe it, just as general relativity needed a geometry of four dimensions to describe spacetime.
Entropic gravity has, then, a lot of heavy-duty conceptual work to back it up. But it is not the only candidate to replace string theory. Others jostling for attention include an old competitor called loop quantum gravity, originally proposed in 1994 by Carlo Rovelli, then at the University of Pittsburgh, and Lee Smolin, of the Perimeter Institute. This, and causal dynamical triangulation, a more recent but similar idea, suggest that spacetime is not the smooth fabric asserted by general relativity, but, rather, has a structureeither elementary loops or triangles, according to which of the two theories you support.
A third option, asymptotically safe gravity, goes back still further, to 1976. It was suggested by Steven Weinberg, one of the Standard Models chief architects. A natural way to develop a theory of quantum gravity is to add gravitons to the model. Unfortunately, this approach got nowhere, because when the interactions of these putative particles were calculated at higher energies, the maths seemed to become nonsensical. However, Weinberg, who died in July, argued that this apparent breakdown would go away (in maths speak, the calculations would be asymptotically safe) if sufficiently powerful machines were used to do the calculating. And, with the recent advent of supercomputers of such power, it looks, from early results, as if he might have been right.
One of the most intriguing competitors of entropic gravity, though, is the amplituhedron formulation of quantum theory. This was introduced in 2013 by Nima Arkani-Hamed of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton and Jaroslav Trnka of the University of California, Davis. They have found a class of geometric structures dubbed amplituhedrons, each of which encodes the details of a possible quantum interaction. These, in turn, are facets of a master amplituhedron that encodes every possible type of physical process. It is thus possible to reformulate all of quantum theory in terms of the amplituhedron.
Most attempts at a theory of everything try to fit gravity, which Einstein describes geometrically, into quantum theory, which does not rely on geometry in this way. The amplituhedron approach does the opposite, by suggesting that quantum theory is actually deeply geometric after all. Better yet, the amplituhedron is not founded on notions of spacetime, or even statistical mechanics. Instead, these ideas emerge naturally from it. So, while the amplituhedron approach does not as yet offer a full theory of quantum gravity, it has opened up an intriguing path that may lead to one.
That space, time and even causality are emergent rather than fundamental properties of the cosmos are radical ideas. But this is the point. General relativity and quantum mechanics, the physics revolutions of the 20th century, were viewed as profound precisely because they overthrew common sense. To accept relativity meant abandoning a universal notion of time and space. To take quantum mechanics seriously meant getting comfortable with ideas like entanglement and superposition. Embracing entropic gravity or its alternatives will require similar feats of the imagination.
No theory, though, is worth a damn without data. That, after all, is the problem with Supersymmetry. Work like Dr Rubinos points the way. But something out of a particle-physics laboratory would also be welcome. And, though their meaning is obscure, the past few months have indeed seen two experimentally induced cracks in the Standard Model.
On March 23rd a team from CERN, the organisation that runs the LHC, reported an unexpected difference in behaviour between electrons and their heavier cousins, muons. These particles differ from one another in no known properties but their masses, so the Standard Model predicts that when other particles decay into them, the two should each be produced in equal numbers. But this appears not to be true. Interim results from the LHC suggest that a type of particle called a B-meson is more likely to decay into an electron than a muon. That suggests an as-yet-undescribed fundamental force is missing from the Standard Model. Then, on April 7th, Fermilab, Americas biggest particle-physics facility, announced the interim results of its own muon experiment, Muon g-2.
In the quantum world, there is no such thing as a perfect vacuum. Instead, a froth of particles constantly pops in and out of existence everywhere in spacetime. These are virtual rather than real particlesthat is, they are transient fluctuations which emerge straight out of quantum uncertainty. But, although they are short-lived, during the brief periods of their existence they still have time to interact with more permanent sorts of matter. They are, for example, the source of the black-hole radiation predicted by Hawking.
The strengths of their interactions with types of matter more conventional than black holes are predicted by the Standard Model, and to test these predictions, Muon g-2 shoots muons in circles around a powerful superconducting magnetic-storage ring. The quantum froth changes the way the muons wobble, which detectors can pick up with incredible precision. The Muon g-2 experiment suggests that the interactions causing these wobbles are slightly stronger than the Standard Model predicts. If confirmed, this would mean the model is missing one or more elementary particles.
There is a slim chance that these are the absent sparticles. If so, it is the supporters of supersymmetry who will have the last laugh. But nothing points in this direction and, having failed thus far to stand their ideas up, they are keeping sensibly quiet.
Whatever the causes of these two results, they do show that there is something out there which established explanations cannot account for. Similarly unexplained anomalies were starting points for both quantum theory and relativity. It looks possible, therefore, that what has seemed one of physicss darkest periods is about to brighten into a new morning.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline "Bye, bye, little Susy"
Artists illustration of ghost particles moving through a quantum spin liquid. Credit: Jenny Nuss/Berkeley Lab
An unexpected finding by scientists at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley could advance quantum computers and high-temperature superconductors.
Scientists have taken the clearest picture yet of electronic particles that make up a mysterious magnetic state called a quantum spin liquid (QSL).
The achievement could facilitate the development of superfast quantum computers and energy-efficient superconductors.
The scientists are the first to capture an image of how electrons in a QSL decompose into spin-like particles called spinons and charge-like particles called chargons.
Artists illustration of ghost particles moving through a quantum spin liquid. Credit: Jenny Nuss/Berkeley Lab
Other studies have seen various footprints of this phenomenon, but we have an actual picture of the state in which the spinon lives. This is something new, said study leader Mike Crommie, a senior faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and physics professor at UC.
Spinons are like ghost particles. They are like the Big Foot of quantum physics people say that theyve seen them, but its hard to prove that they exist, said co-author Sung-Kwan Mo, a staff scientist at Berkeley Labs Advanced Light Source. With our method weve provided some of the best evidence to date.
In a QSL, spinons freely move about carrying heat and spin but no electrical charge. To detect them, most researchers have relied on techniques that look for their heat signatures.
Now, as reported in the journal Nature Physics, Crommie, Mo, and their research teams have demonstrated how to characterize spinons in QSLs by directly imaging how they are distributed in a material.
Schematic of the triangular spin lattice and star-of-David charge density wave pattern in a monolayer of tantalum diselenide. Each star consists of 13 tantalum atoms. Localized spins are represented by a blue arrow at the star center. The wavefunction of the localized electrons is represented by gray shading. Credit: Mike Crommie et al./Berkeley Lab
To begin the study, Mos group at Berkeley Labs Advanced Light Source (ALS) grew single-layer samples of tantalum diselenide (1T-TaSe2) that are only three-atoms thick. This material is part of a class of materials called transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs). The researchers in Mos team are experts in molecular beam epitaxy, a technique for synthesizing atomically thin TMDC crystals from their constituent elements.
Mos team then characterized the thin films through angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, a technique that uses X-rays generated at the ALS.
Scanning tunneling microscopy image of a tantalum diselenide sample that is just 3 atoms thick. Credit: Mike Crommie et al./Berkeley Lab
Using a microscopy technique called scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), researchers in the Crommie lab including co-first authors Wei Ruan, a postdoctoral fellow at the time, and Yi Chen, then a UC Berkeley graduate student injected electrons from a metal needle into the tantalum diselenide TMDC sample.
Images gathered by scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) an imaging technique that measures how particles arrange themselves at a particular energy revealed something quite unexpected: a layer of mysterious waves having wavelengths larger than one nanometer (1 billionth of a meter) blanketing the materials surface.
The long wavelengths we saw didnt correspond to any known behavior of the crystal, Crommie said. We scratched our heads for a long time. What could cause such long wavelength modulations in the crystal? We ruled out the conventional explanations one by one. Little did we know that this was the signature of spinon ghost particles.
With help from a theoretical collaborator at MIT, the researchers realized that when an electron is injected into a QSL from the tip of an STM, it breaks apart into two different particles inside the QSL spinons (also known as ghost particles) and chargons. This is due to the peculiar way in which spin and charge in a QSL collectively interact with each other. The spinon ghost particles end up separately carrying the spin while the chargons separately bear the electrical charge.
Illustration of an electron breaking apart into spinon ghost particles and chargons inside a quantum spin liquid. Credit: Mike Crommie et al./Berkeley Lab
In the current study, STM/STS images show that the chargons freeze in place, forming what scientists call a star-of-David charge-density-wave. Meanwhile, the spinons undergo an out-of-body experience as they separate from the immobilized chargons and move freely through the material, Crommie said. This is unusual since in a conventional material, electrons carry both the spin and charge combined into one particle as they move about, he explained. They dont usually break apart in this funny way.
Crommie added that QSLs might one day form the basis of robust quantum bits (qubits) used for quantum computing. In conventional computing a bit encodes information either as a zero or a one, but a qubit can hold both zero and one at the same time, thus potentially speeding up certain types of calculations. Understanding how spinons and chargons behave in QSLs could help advance research in this area of next-gen computing.
Another motivation for understanding the inner workings of QSLs is that they have been predicted to be a precursor to exotic superconductivity. Crommie plans to test that prediction with Mos help at the ALS.
Part of the beauty of this topic is that all the complex interactions within a QSL somehow combine to form a simple ghost particle that just bounces around inside the crystal, he said. Seeing this behavior was pretty surprising, especially since we werent even looking for it.
Reference: Evidence for quantum spin liquid behaviour in single-layer 1T-TaSe2 from scanning tunnelling microscopy by Wei Ruan, Yi Chen, Shujie Tang, Jinwoong Hwang, Hsin-Zon Tsai, Ryan L. Lee, Meng Wu, Hyejin Ryu, Salman Kahn, Franklin Liou, Caihong Jia, Andrew Aikawa, Choongyu Hwang, Feng Wang, Yongseong Choi, Steven G. Louie, Patrick A. Lee, Zhi-Xun Shen, Sung-Kwan Mo & Michael F. Crommie, 19 August 2021, Nature Physics.DOI: 10.1038/s41567-021-01321-0
Researchers from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; Stanford University; Argonne National Laboratory; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai Tech University, Shenzhen University, Henan University of China; and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology and Pusan National University of Korea contributed to this study. (Co-first author Wei Ruan is now an assistant professor of physics at Fudan University in China; co-first author Yi Chen is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Quantum Nanoscience, Institute for Basic Science of Korea.)
This work was supported by the DOE Office of Science, and used resources at Berkeley Labs Advanced Light Source and Argonne National Laboratorys Advanced Photon Source. The Advanced Light Source and Advanced Photon Source are DOE Office of Science user facilities.
Additional support was provided by the National Science Foundation.
With the frequency and severity of cyber threats increasing practically by the day, it's become more important than ever to put strong measures in place to protect your privacy and your most confidential data. The most effective way to do this is to protect yourself online with an excellent VPN, and protect the files on your computer with encrypted cloud storage such as Internxt Drive offers. Since both of those services are ridiculously inexpensive, there is no excuse for leaving you and your data vulnerable.
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However, in spite of its complex power, Internxt is very easy to use. The user interface is quite intuitive and the service is convenient to access. An app is available for all of your devices, including desktop and browser, as well as Android and iOS mobile devices.
Also, while your files are supremely protected, sharing them is still a simple matter. Internxt Drive users can share their data over other cloud storage services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Apple iCloud, and Microsoft OneDrive. That makes it easy for teams to privately collaborate with customized features and user-to-user solutions.
If you want truly private and secure cloud storage, it's hard to beat what Internxt offers, especially when you can get a year's subscription at a discount. As TechRadar notes: "Unlike popular cloud storage services like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Microsoft OneDrive, Internxt is a zero-knowledge file storage service that supports end-to-end encryption."
Don't pass up this chance to enjoy the peace of mind that a vast amount of high-security storage can offer. Get Internxt - 2TB Decentralized Cloud Storage: 1-Year Subscription while it's on sale for just $9.99, instead of the normal price of $126.
When Jessica Ko was head of design at Google and then Opendoor, she realized that her teams spent about 90% of their time digging around Dropbox looking for assets.
In many cases, theyd find older versions. Or they couldnt find what they were looking for. Or even worse, theyd accidentally pick the wrong asset.
It was such a chaotic process, Ko recalls. Anyone could go in and alter things and change folder structures around. It was a total mess, and just continued like that because there was no alternative.
As Opendoor grew in size, the problem became an even bigger one, she said.
Designers were quitting because it was giving them so much anxiety, Ko recalls. Dropbox hadnt solved it yet. Google Drive was not a good alternative either. Designers deal with files the most, and were exchanging files constantly.
Besides the frustration and stress the problem of file storage and sharing caused, not being able to locate the correct assets also led to errors, which in turn led to lots of money lost, according to Ko.
We spent a lot of money on photo shoots because we couldnt find new things, or people would have to recreate designs, she said.
On top of that, she said, designers werent the only ones who needed to access the assets. Finance teams were constantly needing them for things like creating pitch decks.
So in 2018, Ko left Opendoor to set about solving the problem she was tired of dealing with by creating file storage for modern design workflows and processes. Or put more simply, she wanted to build a new kind of cloud storage that would serve as an alternative to Dropbox and Google Drive built by, and for, creatives.
In early 2020, Ko (CEO) teamed up with Alex Zirbel (CTO) to launch San Francisco-based Playbook, which she describes as the Dropbox for designers, to tackle the challenge. And today, the startup has emerged from stealth and announced it has raised $4 million in a seed funding round led by Founders Fund at a $20 million post-money valuation.
Other investors in the round include Abstract, Inovia, Maple, Basis Set, Backend, Wilson Sonsini and a number of angels, including Opendoor co-founder and CEO Eric Wu, Gusto co-founder Eddie Kim and SV Angels Beth Turner.
In a nutshell, Playbook claims it can automatically imports, tags, categorizes an organizations entire media library, in minutes.
When starting out, the first thing Playbook set out to do was attempt to reinvent the way folders exist for assets, with subfolders underneath. And then, the company set about trying to change the way people share files.
Since so much is done over email and Slack these days, version control becomes even more difficult, Ko told TechCrunch. So Playbook, she said, has built a storage system that can be accessed by all parties as opposed to just sending files via different channels.
For years, these assets have been dropped into what feels like a file cabinet, Ko said. But these days, sharing assets is much more collaborative and theres different kinds of parties involved such as freelancers and contractors. So who is managing these files, and controlling the versions has become very complex.
Playbook offers 4TB of free storage, which Ko says is 266 times the free version of Google Storage and 2,000 times that of Dropbox. The hope is that this encourages users to use its platform as an all-around creative hub without worrying about running out of storage space. It also automatically scans, organizes and tags files and has worked to make it easier to browse files and folders visually.
Image Credits: Playbook
In March, Playbook opened a beta version of its product to the design community and got about 1,000 users in two months. People continued to sign up and the company at one point had to close the beta so that it could manage all the new users.
Today, it has about 10,000 users signed up in beta. Early users include individual freelancers to design teams at companies like Fast, Folx and Literati.
The nine-person company wants to focus on getting the product right before attempting to monetize and launch to enterprises (which will likely happen next year), Ko said.
For now, Playbook is focused on the needs of freelancers. The company believes that the exponential growth of freelancers post-pandemic means cloud storage needs to be smarter.
We want to first solve that use case, and unlock the problem from the bottom up, Ko told TechCrunch.
Also, another strategy behind that initial focus is that freelancers can also introduce Playbook to the companies and enterprises they work for, so the marketing then becomes built into the product.
They can transfer assets and files through Playbook to their clients, who tend to adopt, she said.
Today, Playbook is helping manage over 3.2 million assets and says it has hundreds of waitlist sign-ups every month.
Looking ahead, Zirbel said the startup wants to branch out into image scanning, similarity, content detection, previewing and long-term cloud storage and tons of integrations.
There are lots of interesting technology challenges when you focus on the creative side of cloud storage, he said.
Founders Funds John Luttig said when the firm first met Ko and Zirbel last year, it was clear that they had a depth of understanding and thoughtfulness around file management that his firm hadnt seen before. Plus, in his view, there has been very little innovation in cloud storage since Dropbox launched in 2007.
The product leverages modern design, collaboration principles, and artificial intelligence to make file management much faster and easier, he wrote via email. Given their design-centric backgrounds, theyre extremely well-positioned to rethink the user experience for file systems from the ground up.
Playbook, he said, is able to leverage recent advancements in computer vision and design to build a far better product to manage and share files.
A reader named Herb emailed today with one simple question: Just read of someone stealing info from iCloud. Is it safe?
I sent Herb a quick response, but then I decided that its time for a refresher about cloud security.
There are no guarantees when it comes to online security, but as more of our lives and documents and financial dealings are happening online, it behooves us to do all we can to keep that data safe.
This might include occasionally changing your passwords and not reusing passwords on multiple sites (Im guilty of this).
There are also varying levels of security. Whenever we talk about cloud storage, from services like Apples iCloud, Googles Drive or Microsofts OneDrive (and others), I immediately think of what type of things Im choosing to store in the cloud.
We rely on those big companies to keep our data safe, and to do that we need to take advantage of all the safeguards they offer.
Besides a strong, unique password, the best thing you can do is take advantage of two-factor authentication (2FA).
With 2FA enabled on a service like iCloud, youll be asked to register your cellphone number.
From then on, when you log in to access iCloud documents or services, youll need your Apple ID and the password, and Apple will send a message to your phone with a six-digit code. You have to enter that code to complete the login.
So now your account is doubly protected because a would-be hacker needs your Apple ID, your password and your phone to receive the code.
I think thats a pretty safe system.
You need to enroll in 2FA for all your online services. Some companies, like Apple, really push you into setting up 2FA. For others, you may need to dig around in your account settings to find it.
Ive set up 2FA everywhere I can, especially where I have files stored or perform financial transactions.
Every service has a slightly different way of going about 2FA, so be sure to read all the fine print before you choose to enroll.
For instance, Apple users who enable 2FA only have two weeks to change their mind and turn it off if they dont like it.
You really should take an afternoon to go through your online accounts, change passwords and look into enabling security measures that are available.
I know Im overdue to review mine.
If you would like to read more about 2FA from Apple, Google and Microsoft, see the links below.
The amount of unstructured data harvested by enterprises is growing fast, forcing organizations to improve their data management strategies and move deeper into the cloud.
This is according to a new report from data management firm Komprise, based on a poll of 320 IT and storage professionals, which states that more than half (56 percent) are now prioritizing moving more unstructured data to the cloud.
This makes sense, given that almost two-thirds (63 percent) already manage more than 1PB of data, and spend almost a third (30 percent) of their IT budgets on storage and backup. Whats more, they expect the cost of storage and backup to rise this year.
Simply buying more storage is not a feasible strategy, the report adds, as the figures quickly add up and can burn through budgets. Instead, businesses need to be smart about their data management strategy.
A hybrid approach emerges as a solid solution, Kompromise claims. Half of the businesses store data in a mix of both on-prem and cloud-based solutions, and expect to spend more than half of their IT budgets on cloud data storage in the next 24 months.
As costs rise and visibility remains low, businesses are looking to create systematic policies for data management (56 percent), and to further invest in analytics tools (45 percent), the report concludes.
Global Cloud Storage Software Market Analysis to 2025 is a specialized and in-depth study of the Cloud Storage Software industry with a focus on the global market trend. The research report on Cloud Storage Software Market provides comprehensive analysis on market status and development pattern, including types, applications, rising technology and region. Cloud Storage Software Market report covers the present and past market scenarios, market development patterns, and is likely to proceed with a continuing development over the forecast period. A number of analysis tools such as SWOT analysis and Porters five forces analysis have been employed to provide an accurate understanding of this market.
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Some of the key players of Cloud Storage Software Market:
The Global Cloud Storage Software Market research report offers an in-depth analysis of the global market, providing relevant information for the new market entrants or well-established players. Some of the key strategies employed by leading key players operating in the market and their impact analysis have been included in this research report.
Segmentation by Solution:
The report provides a detailed overview of the industry including both qualitative and quantitative information. It provides overview and forecast of the global Cloud Storage Software market based on product and application. It also provides market size and forecast till 2025 for overall Cloud Storage Software market with respect to five major regions, namely; North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and South America (SAM), which is later sub-segmented by respective countries and segments.
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The report evaluates market dynamics effecting the market during the forecast period i.e., drivers, restraints, opportunities, and future trend and provides exhaustive PEST analysis for all five regions.
Fundamentals of Table of Content:
1 Report Overview1.1 Study Scope1.2 Key Market Segments1.3 Players Covered1.4 Market Analysis by Type1.5 Market by Application1.6 Study Objectives1.7 Years Considered
2 Global Growth Trends2.1 Cloud Storage Software Market Size2.2 Cloud Storage Software Growth Trends by Regions2.3 Industry Trends
3 Market Share by Key Players3.1 Cloud Storage Software Market Size by Manufacturers3.2 Cloud Storage Software Key Players Head office and Area Served3.3 Key Players Cloud Storage Software Product/Solution/Service3.4 Date of Enter into Cloud Storage Software Market3.5 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion Plans
4 Breakdown Data by Product4.1 Global Cloud Storage Software Sales by Product4.2 Global Cloud Storage Software Revenue by Product4.3 Cloud Storage Software Price by Product
5 Breakdown Data by End User5.1 Overview5.2 Global Cloud Storage Software Breakdown Data by End User
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