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IBM Unveils Nighthawk And Loon Quantum Chips
The company’s new processors push toward practical quantum advantage with two divergent chip designs.
IBM has released a pair of quantum chips — Nighthawk and Loon — that the company hopes will give it a credible shot at demonstrating the quantum advantage over regular processors. The designs split into two directions, with the Loon chip being the more experimental of the pair.
Nighthawk is IBM’s main bet. The chip is a 120-qubit version that’s due for distribution to partners in late 2025, using 218 tunable couplers in a square lattice to tighten control over qubit interactions. IBM says the layout will let it “execute circuits with 30 percent more complexity” and run problems that require up to 5,000 two-qubit gates. The company wants this line to mature quickly enough to power its first verifiable advantage claim.
Loon goes off the conventional path. Instead of keeping qubits on a flat plane, it links them vertically as well. New Scientist has flagged the design as an early test of 3D quantum layouts — an attempt to reduce errors by giving qubits more routes to talk to each other. It’s not aimed at near-term rollout but could shape future rigs if the approach holds.
The split strategy underlines IBM’s view that smart connectivity, not headline qubit counts, will decide who reaches the next milestone. Google, on the other hand, is leaning another way: Its Willow chip, paired with the “Quantum Echoes” algorithm, has already been presented as a proof point for “the first-ever verifiable quantum advantage running the out-of-order time correlator (OTOC) algorithm”.
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IBM is also backing a community-run quantum advantage tracker with Algorithmiq, the Flatiron Institute and BlueQubit. The framework “supports three experiments for quantum advantage across observable estimation, variational problems, and problems with efficient classical verification,” and IBM is pushing researchers to contribute.
For MENA labs building quantum and HPC programs under national digitalization efforts, the contrast between Nighthawk and Loon offers a clearer view of where the hardware race may bend next — tight, lattice-driven control on one side; a stab at 3D connectivity on the other.
The field is moving fast, and IBM’s twin quantum chips mark its next swing at staying in the fight.
News
Egypt’s Mobile Wallets Are Booming, But Cash Still Has Power
Egypt’s telecom regulator says $57.6 billion moved through more than 57 million wallets in six months. And one operator handled 77% of the value.
Egypt’s mobile wallets handled EGP 2.96 trillion ($57.6 billion) in transactions in the first half of 2026, according to the National Telecom Regulatory Authority – a 56% rise on the EGP 1.90 trillion ($36.9 billion) recorded a year earlier. Transactions grew faster still, up 62% to 2.22 billion, while registered wallets climbed 23% to 57.01 million.
On one reading, that is exactly what Egypt’s regulators have been pushing for: a payments system that runs through telecom-linked wallets rather than banknotes. But the same data shows how far cash still reaches into it. Cash withdrawals made up just 12% of the transactions taking money out of wallets, yet 75% of the value withdrawn or spent.
Money arrives mostly from bank accounts: transfers through InstaPay accounted for 78% of deposit transactions and 58% of the value deposited, while incoming remittances from abroad made up 3% of deposit transactions but 10% of their value. Once inside, it largely moves between wallets – wallet-to-wallet transfers accounted for 54% of all transactions and 67% of total value, with mobile and internet top-ups a distant second at 25% of volume. In effect, the wallet is serving as a transfer layer: the place money passes through between the bank account and the banknote.
That layer also runs predominantly through one operator. Vodafone Cash held 53% of registered wallets and 57% of active ones, but handled 69% of transactions and 77% of their value. Its nearest rival, e& money, held 23% of registered wallets but 14% of transaction value; Orange Cash 20% and 8%; WE Pay 4% of wallets. How many of the 57.01 million are active is not stated.
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Adoption is rather uneven in other respects. Men held 38 million wallets, or 67% of the total, against 19 million held by women. Users aged 26 to 45 accounted for half of all wallets, and Cairo alone had 10.6 million, or 19% of the national total, with Giza next at 6.5 million.
The NTRA says it is continuing to work with telecom operators on the regulatory framework for wallet services, part of a wider effort to expand electronic payments and financial inclusion. Its own figures show that effort succeeding on the way in. On the way out, three-quarters of the value still leaves as cash.
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