11 March
2022
Quantum Blockchain Technologies
Plc
(“QBT” or “the Company”)
Bitcoin Mining
Research and Development Update
The board of Quantum Blockchain Technologies (AIM: QBT) is
pleased to update shareholders on the current progress of its
Bitcoin mining R&D activities.
The Company’s multi-technology approach to develop the fastest
Bitcoin (“BTC”) miner in the market, is moving rapidly ahead. The
board and its R&D Team are extremely pleased with the results
achieved to date and the Company intends to put them into practical
use as soon as possible. In the meantime, QBT is securing its
Intellectual Property (“IP”) assets, by filing a number of new
patent applications for each new research result obtained.
Quantum Mining
The Quantum Computing R&D Team has now developed a quantum
version of a BTC mining algorithm, based on Quantum Bit (“qubit”)
based quantum computation, using quantum logic gates. Testing of
the quantum programme will begin shortly on a quantum computer,
following the signing last week of an NDA with a major US
technology manufacturer.
The new qubit based algorithm is significant enough to encourage
the Company to file a patent application to protect this BTC mining
development, which will be lodged shortly.
Following six months of testing on the D-Wave quantum computer,
which is based on adiabatic quantum annealing computation (“quantum
annealing”) (i.e., not using qubits / quantum logic gates), the
Company completed the analysis phase in December 2021, acquiring all of the necessary
information. Testing has been suspended on this type of quantum
computer. Most of the work conducted for programming the adiabatic
quantum annealing based computer, has been, however, very relevant
for the Quantum Computing R&D Team, and has resulted in an
innovative reformulation of SHA-256 (the core BTC mining algorithm)
as an optimisation problem.
This new reformulation to be solved with a quantum annealing
approach, has now been developed and tested on a cloud accessed
quantum annealing software simulator, made available to the
Company’s Quantum Computing R&D Team by a major Japanese
producer. A version of the quantum annealing simulator has been
implemented, using available specifications which will be run
initially from an IT R&D platform in a datacentre in
Milan, Italy. This will allow the
Company to develop quantum annealing optimisation simulator code on
a number of dedicated FPGA chips.
The combined use of the quantum optimisation algorithm and the
ASIC miner, which is currently under development by the Company, is
expected to increase the hashing speed, compared to the best ASIC
miners announced by competitors. Tests are ongoing to confirm these
initial experimental indications.
A patent application relating to the optimisation conversion of
the BTC mining algorithm and its integration with an ASIC based
miner, will be filed as soon as practical.
Artificial Intelligence based Bitcoin
Mining
The Company is pleased to announce that it has appointed an
international expert in the field of Machine Learning to its AI
Research Team. The expert is the former head of the Neural Networks
Research Laboratory of the Department of Computer Science of the
University of Milan.
The use of AI techniques (mainly Machine Learning) to speed up
the successful mining of BTC, has been studied by the R&D Team.
As part of the testing process, these techniques have been
partially applied across different levels of the entire BTC mining
process. As soon as quantitative results are available the Company
will build prototype “solo” BTC miners (i.e., not in pool mining),
using existing or separate Computer Processing Units (“CPU”),
Graphics Processing Units (“GPU") and FPGA cores.
A patent application on the specific AI techniques developed,
will be filed as soon as practical.
ASIC Development and Second Patent
Drafting of the technical document for the Company’s second
patent application is now complete and implementation on an FPGA is
nearly finished. Results of the overall performance achieved by the
combination of the optimisations from the first and the second
patent will be obtained for the final FPGA code shortly. The
Company plans to conduct tests using the new optimisations within
an ASIC development environment, to provide more accurate
measurements with respect to energy consumption and mining speed,
on a 5nm ASIC, which is the Company’s ultimate goal.
The Company is working with two independent partners to conduct
verification tests on the final performance of QBT’s prototype
ASIC. Their role is also to advise on how best to achieve
efficiencies in coding, in order to best exploit the specific
manufacturing technologies of individual silicon fabricators, when
it comes to manufacturing of the prototype chips.
Quantitative performance data will be available within a few
weeks.
IT infrastructure
The Company’s IT infrastructure is now fully operational. Solo
mining activities, created to test AI accelerated miners, running
on CPU, GPU and FPGA are currently being finalised. The Company
will provide the results of these tests once testing has been
completed.
Francesco Gardin, CEO and
Executive Chairman of QBT, commented: “We have made impressive
progress on all our core R&D areas, and we will now start field
testing our optimisations of BTC mining in the next few weeks.
“We are also conducting internal and independent performance
measures to help us assess mining speed and energy consumption
within the ASIC line of research, which is now at the simulation
stage. Based on data we have recorded to date, we expect to see a
higher performance than originally estimated; this is mainly due to
the optimisations which will be included in the second patent
application, based on the work of our cryptography expert and the
coding techniques implemented by our FPGA/ASIC Design Team.
“All of the results will be verified before any cooling
techniques are implemented which, if applied, could allow for a
further increase in speed.”
This announcement contains inside information for the purposes
of Article 7 of the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) 596/2014 as it
forms part of UK domestic law by virtue of the European Union
(Withdrawal) Act 2018 ("MAR"), and is disclosed in accordance with
the Company's obligations under Article 17 of MAR.
For further information please
contact:
Quantum Blockchain Technologies Plc
Francesco Gardin, CEO and Executive
Chairman
+39 335 296573
SP Angel Corporate Finance (Nominated Adviser &
Broker)
Jeff Keating
+44
(0)20 3470 0470
Leander (Financial PR)
Christian
Taylor-Wilkinson
+44 (0) 7795 168 157
About Quantum Blockchain Technologies
Plc
QBT (AIM: QBT) is an AIM listed investment company which has
recently realigned its strategic focus to technology related
investments, with special regard to Quantum computing, Blockchain,
Cryptocurrencies and AI sectors. The Company has commenced an
aggressive R&D and investment programme in the dynamic world of
Blockchain Technology, which includes cryptocurrency mining and
other advanced blockchain applications.
Glossary of Terms:
ASIC: An Application-Specific Integrated Circuit is an
integrated circuit chip customized for a particular use, rather
than intended for general-purpose use. ASIC chips are typically
fabricated using metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) technology, as MOS
integrated circuit chips
CPU: The central processing unit (CPU) is the unit which
performs most of the processing inside a computer. It processes all
instructions received by software running on the PC and by other
hardware components and acts as a powerful calculator.
FPGA: A field-programmable gate array is an integrated
circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after
manufacturing – hence the term "field-programmable". The FPGA
configuration is generally specified using a hardware description
language (HDL), similar to that used for an application-specific
integrated circuit (ASIC).
GPU: A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a
computer chip that renders graphics and images by performing rapid
mathematical calculations.
Nanometer: A nanometer is a unit of measurement that is
equivalent to one billionth of a meter. It is widely used as a
scale for building tiny, complex, and atomic-scale computing and
electronic components, such as ASIC chips.
Pool Mining: As part of bitcoin mining, mining “pools”
are a network of miners that work together to mine a block, then
split the block reward among the pool miners. Mining pools are a
good way for miners to combine their resources to increase the
probability of mining a block, and also contribute to the overall
health and decentralization of the bitcoin network.
SHA-256: Secure Hashing Algorithm (SHA)-256 is the hash
function and mining algorithm of the Bitcoin protocol, referring to
the cryptographic hash function that outputs a 256 bits long
value.
Quantum Annealing (QA): which also includes
adiabatic quantum computation, is a quantum
computing method used to find the optimal solution of problems
involving a large number of solutions, by taking advantage of
properties specific to quantum physics like quantum tunnelling,
entanglement and superposition.
Quantum Logic Gates: Is a rudimentary quantum
circuit operating on a small number of qubits. They are
the analogues for quantum computers to classical logic
gates for conventional digital computers. Quantum logic gates
are reversible, unlike many classical logic gates.
Qubit: A classical bit can be in two states, it can be
either zero or it can be one. A quantum bit or qubit, however, can
be in a sort of zero state and in a one state at the same time.
This situation is called a superposition of (quantum) states.
Qubits have some very particular properties: for instance, it is
not possible to make copies of qubits.