Efforts to invent more practical superconductors and better batteries could be the first areas of business to get a quantum speed boost. This month IBM and Google both said they aim to commercialize quantum computers within the next few years (Google specified five), selling access to the exotic machines in a new kind of cloud service. The competitors predict a new era in which computers are immensely more powerful, with dividends including more efficient routing for logistics and mapping companies, new forms of machine learning, better product recommendations, and improved diagnostic tests. But before any of that, the first quantum computer to start paying its way with useful work in the real world will probably do so by helping chemists trying to do things like improve batteries or electronics. So far, the early, small quantum computers researchers have sketched out in most detail seem best suited to simulating molecules and reactions.

This month IBM and Google both said they aim to commercialize quantum computers within the next few years (Google specified five), selling access to the exotic machines in a new kind of cloud service. The competitors predict a new era in which computers are immensely more powerful, with dividends including more efficient routing for logistics and mapping companies, new forms of machine learning, better product recommendations, and improved diagnostic tests. But before any of that, the first quantum computer to start paying its way with useful work in the real world looks likely to do so by helping chemists trying to do things like improve batteries or electronics. So far, simulating molecules and reactions is the use case for early, small quantum computers sketched out in most detail by researchers developing the new kind of algorithms needed for such machines. Quantum computers, which represent data using quantum-mechanical effects apparent at tiny scales, should be able to perform computations impossible for any conventional computer.

Technology giants IBM ibm, Google googl, and seven others have joined hands to launch an open specification that can boost datacenter server performance by up to ten times, to take on Intel intc . The new standard, called Open Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (OpenCAPI), is an open forum to provide a high bandwidth, low latency open interface design specification. The open interface will help corporate and cloud data centers to speed up big data, machine learning, analytics and other emerging workloads. The consortium plans to make the OpenCAPI specification available to the public before the end of the year and expects servers and related products based on the new standard in the second half of 2017, it said in a statement. Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, is known to protect its server technologies and has chosen to sit out of the new consortium.

Microsoft on Tuesday announced artificial intelligence initiatives specifically targeting cancer. Such work puts the software giant in a supercomputing realm with rivals IBM and Google. Microsoft said its new initiative includes four research teams. The first is harnessing machine learning and natural language processing to help oncologists glean existing research data to better understand personalized care. A second team is pairing machine learning with what Microsoft called "computer vision" in work with radiologists to track tumor progression.