The Grateful Dead’s crucial fourth studio release, Workingman’s Dead, was a Top 30 breakthrough for the band in 1970, including the single “Uncle John’s Band,” which reached No. 69 on the Billboard Hot 100. A fan favorite featuring now-iconic tracks such as “Casey Jones” and “Cumberland Blues,” the album has just been reissued in Rhino Music’s excellent High Fidelity series.

This edition holds considerable appeal for fans seeking a really good, clean-sounding copy of the album that remains true to the intent of the original production without breaking the bank.

From the official press materials, we learn the core specs that make this edition special: Workingman’s Dead (Rhino High Fidelity) was cut from the original master tapes by Kevin Gray and pressed on 180-gram black vinyl at Optimal in Germany. It features glossy gatefold packaging with newly written liner notes by author and Grateful Dead historian David Gans.

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This new Rhino High Fidelity edition is a single LP spinning at 33⅓ RPM. For contrast, Mobile Fidelity’s 2023 edition is a 2LP, 45 RPM set. The Rhino HiFi pressing sounds true to, and fairly consistent with, my clean 1970-era green-label Warner Bros. original. It is a touch brighter, but overall it sounds like Workingman’s Dead is supposed to sound.

The new edition comes housed in an expanded gatefold sleeve with a great photo of the band inside. The disc arrives in its own protective, audiophile-grade, plastic-lined inner sleeve. My copy was perfectly quiet and well centered, so I have no issues on that front.

The cover is presented in a high-gloss laminated form akin to a Blue Note Tone Poet reissue. It looks really nice, and I totally get that this glossy presentation is part of the Rhino HiFi aesthetic, but the reality is that the original cover design of Workingman’s Dead was a far more rustic affair back in 1970.

Employing a classy-but-crude, brushed-brown, shopping-bag-like paper stock to evoke old-time America, that raw, sepia-toned look was part of a back-to-the-roots movement for artists trying to put the dayglow psychedelic era behind them. Think CSN&Y’s Déjà Vu, Neil Young’s Harvest, The Band’s eponymous second LP, and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy.

A minor detail for some fans, perhaps, but for others this change in the cover design is a significant factor, as it is part of the overall vinyl album experience.

All that said, for the price, the Rhino High Fidelity edition of Workingman’s Dead remains a solid offering. Tracking down a genuinely clean original 1970 vinyl pressing these days is not an especially easy task. It took me ages to find one that sounds good from start to finish. Even when they look perfect, many vintage copies of popular albums like this are often distorted on the inner tracks due to repeated play on poorly aligned automatic changers of the era.

And those rare audiophile Dead Heads who did take care of their albums likely still have them in hand. As a result, near-mint copies on the used market can often command prices north of $100. So, for less than $50, being able to pick up a sure-thing remaster that sounds like Workingman’s Dead is supposed to sound is a solid deal.

Limited to 5,000 individually numbered copies, the Rhino High Fidelity edition of Workingman’s Dead is available exclusively at Rhino.com for $39.98 (also from select Warner Music Group stores internationally).

Get your copy before it sells out, which these Rhino High Fidelity titles tend to do. 

Our Ratings

★★★★★★★★★★ Album

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound Quality

★★★★★★★★★★ Pressing Quality

Mark Smotroff is a deep music enthusiast / collector who has also worked in entertainment oriented marketing communications for decades supporting the likes of DTS, Sega and many others. He reviews vinyl for Analog Planet and has written for Audiophile Review, Sound+Vision, Mix, EQ, etc.  You can learn more about him at LinkedIn.

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Microsoft is cutting 3,200 jobs in divisions outside of Xbox today, mostly targeting the organization’s Commercial Business segment. The layoffs come in addition to a large but expected firing spree that also hit Microsoft’s Xbox arm on Monday, July 6.

Microsoft EVP and Chief People Officer Amy Coleman announced the Commercial Business layoffs in a blog post reading, “During my time at Microsoft, I’ve seen this company reinvent itself again and again. What makes that possible has always been our people — their resilience, creativity, and willingness to keep learning.”

Microsoft is firing 4,800 people across Xbox and other divisions today, equating to 2.1 percent of its global workforce. While Coleman made it clear that AI will not immediately replace the eliminated employees’ jobs, she hinted that this could and probably would happen in the near future.

“I also want to be direct that the roles eliminated today are not being replaced by AI,” Coleman wrote, apropos of nothing. “At the same time, what is true is that AI is changing how work gets done. Some of the tasks we do every day can now be automated, and that means we all need to keep learning, keep building new skills, and keep adapting as the work evolves.”

We knew the Xbox layoffs and studio sales were coming, but the additional loss of 3,200 non-gaming employees landed as a surprise on Monday. 

In the case of Xbox, Microsoft laid off 1,600 employees today and is preparing for a further 1,600 firings in the coming months. Additionally, it’s spinning off four studios — Compulsion Games, Double Fine, Ninja Theory and Undead Labs — and potentially shuttering a fifth, Arkane.

Xbox employees have been bracing for layoffs since an ominous memo sent out by new CEO Asha Sharma and COO Matt Booty on June 10. They wrote that after a decade of massive studio acquisitions and poor current-gen hardware sales, the Xbox division was over-extended and losing money. Sharma reiterated these sentiments with more force in a blog post formally announcing the Xbox layoffs on July 6.

One week before the job cuts, Xbox union members under Communications Workers of America urged Microsoft to engage in good-faith negotiations around job security and layoff processes. Microsoft fired 9,000 people across its divisions in July 2025, including hundreds of Xbox employees, and it laid off 1,900 Xbox employees in early 2024.

Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,500 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today — or scroll down further for the answers.

Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc’s Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.

Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, says a routine security inspection found a covert listening device in his home office in Geneva, Bloomberg reports. The 88-year-old has filed a criminal complaint against persons unknown.

The device was reportedly discovered at his private home close to the WEF’s premises. Who planted it, and when, is not known, and the complaint now puts the matter in the hands of Geneva authorities.

The discovery caps a turbulent stretch for Schwab. He resigned as WEF chairman in April 2025 after an anonymous whistleblower letter accused him and his wife of misusing forum resources.

An external investigation by Zurich law firm Homburger later found no evidence of material wrongdoing. Schwab has filed defamation complaints against his anonymous accusers and dismissed the allegations as constructed.

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The forum is now run day to day by former Norwegian foreign minister Borge Brende, with Peter Brabeck-Letmathe serving as interim chairman while a successor search continues. Schwab remains a totemic, and contested, figure in Davos circles.

Elites under surveillance

If confirmed, the bug would make Schwab the latest European public figure caught in a surveillance wave that has already reached the EU’s institutions, where a lawmaker investigating spyware was himself hacked with Pegasus. Europe’s commercial surveillance industry is booming even as regulators hesitate.

A physical bug is old-school tradecraft compared with the phone implants that turn devices into pocket spies. The tools differ, but the target class, politicians, executives, and journalists, stays the same.

Switzerland has had its own recent collisions between technology and power, with the country’s finance minister filing criminal charges over AI-generated abuse. Greece’s Predator affair showed how surveillance scandals can consume governments entirely.

The complaint names no suspects, and bug attributions rarely stick. For a man who spent five decades convening the powerful, the list of people who might want to listen is not short.

The TerraMaster F4-425 Pro is a compact four-bay NAS that punches above its price class, with an eight-core Intel chip, three M.2 slots, and dual 5GbE networking, at the cost of a few real but manageable caveats.

NAS devices have evolved well beyond simple network drives. They now run media servers, security camera systems, and containerized apps, all from one box on the home or office network.

TerraMaster pitches the F4-425 Pro squarely at that all-in-one role. It pairs a decently powerful Intel chip with unusually flexible storage for the class and price point.

I reviewed the smaller two-bay F2-425 in late 2025. The F4-425 Pro sits above it with more bays, a faster processor, a triple M.2 design, and upgraded system software.

TerraMaster F4-425 Pro review: Specifications

TerraMaster F4-425 Pro review: Design

The F4-425 Pro uses a two-tone enclosure, with a black drive-bay face set against a silver body. The four bays are accessed from the front, with tool-free trays for installation.

It measures 5.9 by 7.1 by 8.6 inches and weighs 6.4 pounds without drives. That is a compact footprint for a four-bay unit with this much expansion inside.

Build quality is solid. On NAS devices in this class from other vendors, we’ve seen stripped screws and imprecise material line-up. As with the rest of Terramaster’s products, this is not the case.

TerraMaster F4-425 Pro review: iPad for scale

The front carries a power button, a USB port, and status indicators. A single 120mm fan sits at the rear, with several speed modes available in software.

TerraMaster rates idle noise at 20.9 decibels, measured with four drives in standby. Real-world noise under load is higher and depends on the drives fitted.

We tested the unit with four 4TB Seagate Red drives. We also used four 24TB WD Red Pro, that retail on Amazon with a price that seems to vary by day.

Under load, which is mostly drive chatter, the unit hit about 39 decibels one meter away with either drive array. Good enough.

TerraMaster F4-425 Pro review: Storage and the triple M.2 design

The headline storage feature is the three M.2 NVMe slots, which is unusual for a four-bay NAS. Most competitors offer one or two.

Each M.2 slot supports up to 8TB, and the four SATA bays each take drives up to 30TB. TerraMaster lists a maximum total capacity of 144TB across all seven drives.

There is an inconsistency in TerraMaster’s own materials worth noting. The datasheet text claims 144TB total, while the specification table lists the SATA bays at 120TB raw and the M.2 slots separately, which only reach 144TB when both are combined.

TerraMaster F4-425 Pro review: Simple but functional drive sleds.

The three M.2 slots can be set up as a RAID 5 array. This is a genuinely useful option, allowing a fast SSD pool with redundancy separate from the main hard drive bays.

One caveat sits in the spec sheet. The M.2 slots run at PCIe 3.0 x1, which is a single lane each. That limits the peak speed of each SSD well below what a typical Gen3 x4 NVMe drive can deliver. This is fine, as one drive at the x1 allocation is still about 6 gigabits per second read and write.

We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again. M.2 storage in a 10-gigabit Ethernet NAS is overkill. It’s super-overkill here with 5 gigabit Ethernet, which can be saturated with the hard drives in a striped RAID.

For RAID across the main bays, the unit supports the full range from JBOD up to RAID 10. It also offers TRAID, TerraMaster’s flexible array system that mixes redundancy with easier capacity expansion, similar in concept to Synology’s Hybrid RAID.

TRAID is solid enough, assuming you’re going to stick with Terramaster hardware if you ever upgrade. It works the way it says it will, with easy, albeit time-consuming, addition of drives to the enclosure.

TerraMaster F4-425 Pro review: Connectivity

Networking is handled by two 5-gigabit Ethernet ports. This is an unusual middle ground, sitting above the common 2.5GbE but below the 10GbE found on higher-end units.

The two ports support link aggregation and bonding. TerraMaster claims real-world write speeds up to 1010 MB/s when combined with SMB Multichannel. We didn’t quite see that, even with three SSDs.

On a dedicated wired to wired network between the F4-425 Pro and a M1 Ultra Mac Studio with link aggregation, we saw about 800 megabytes per second. Close enough.

TerraMaster F4-425 Pro review; A rear view.

For external connections, there are three USB-A 3.2 Gen2 ports and one USB-C 3.2 Gen2 port, all rated at 10Gbps. These handle external drives, backups, and direct media imports.

An HDMI port is present, but TerraMaster states it is for displaying system management output rather than media playback. This is a notable limitation for anyone hoping to use it as a direct-attached media player.

For Mac users, TOS supports Time Machine backups over the network. Setup is simple, with old instructions that still work here.

The F4-425 Pro also supports AFP and SMB, both of which macOS handles natively.

TerraMaster F4-425 Pro review: Processor and memory

The F4-425 Pro runs an Intel N305, an eight-core, eight-thread chip that bursts up to 3.8GHz. This is a strong processor for a NAS in this class, well above the budget chips common at this size.

The chip includes integrated graphics with hardware transcoding for H.264, H.265, MPEG-4, and VC-1, up to 4K at 60fps. That makes it well suited to running Plex, Emby, or Jellyfin media servers.

Using a Plex server across our local network, we were able to transcode five 4K streams to 1080p without frame loss. Pretty good.

Geekbench single-core results for the TerraMaster F4-425 Pro and the M1 and M4 versions of Mac mini.

To be fair, we never really expect that much in terms of performance from a NAS. The exceptions are when the NAS is intended to perform double-duty with server applications as well as being a storage appliance.

Under Geekbench, the F4-425 Pro manages a 1,313 single-core score. It’s certainly not going to fare well against the M4 Mac mini or even the M1 Mac mini, but it’s still capable of performing tasks.

Geekbench multi-core results for the TerraMaster F4-425 Pro and the M1 and M4 versions of Mac mini.

It’s a similar story when we turn to multi-core testing. Yes, the TerraMaster gets to 4,702 in Geekbench, but the M1 Mac mini scores twice as much.

These graphs are not to mock the F4-425 Pro. Instead, they are here to praise it.

Do not expect blistering-fast server performance from a NAS except in rare circumstances, on hardware that rivals a MacBook Pro in cost. But here, it’s certainly got the grunt to get things done in the background.

As with most “pro”-grade NAS devices, Docker containers are one of the best ways to extend what this hardware can do. The RAM is a bit of a constraint here, with the new TOS 7 taking up about 3GB of that in daily use.

Memory is where the unit shows a limit. It ships with 8GB of DDR4 in a single SODIMM slot, expandable to 32GB, but it is non-ECC and there is only one slot.

The single memory slot means upgrading requires replacing the existing module rather than adding to it. The lack of ECC is normal at this price, but worth noting for users storing critical data.

TerraMaster F4-425 Pro review: Software, AI, and TOS

The F4-425 Pro runs TerraMaster’s TOS operating system. TerraMaster heavily promotes TOS 7 as “the world’s first AI-native NAS operating system,” built around natural-language control. The marketing claims are extensive, describing voice and text commands handling over 90% of operations.

Sure. It can help, but in testing, the natural-language controls worked for basic tasks but did not meaningfully reduce setup complexity. And, I think uGreen beat them to the punch with the world’s first AI-native NAS operating system,

TerraMaster’s on-device photo AI remains usable but not a reason to switch away from Apple Photos or Google management.

The more grounded app story is strong. TOS supports Docker, virtual machines via VirtualBox, and a wide range of apps including Plex, Emby, and the major download clients.

A built-in Surveillance Manager app connects to ONVIF-standard IP cameras for local recording and playback. This works fine, but is otherwise unremarkable. Most won’t use the app.

TerraMaster F4-425 Pro review: A feature-rich box with caveats to verify

The F4-425 Pro packs an unusual amount into a compact four-bay NAS. The eight-core Intel chip, triple M.2 slots, and dual 5GbE networking are all strong for the class.

Its closest internal reference point is the smaller F2-425 that I reviewed previously. The F4-425 Pro scales that up with more bays, more M.2 expansion, and a more capable processor.

TerraMaster F4-425 Pro review: The rear ports and fan

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The cautions are mostly around marketing versus reality. The AI claims are bold, the PCIe 3.0 x1 M.2 lanes limit SSD speed, and the single non-ECC memory slot caps expansion. This is all okay for the price point and the target user.

For Apple households, TOS handles Time Machine, AFP, and SMB, and the strong media transcoding suits a Plex or Infuse setup. It is not an Apple product, but it slots into an Apple home network without trouble.

TerraMaster F4-425 Pro Pros

• Eight-core Intel N305 with 4K transcoding
• Three M.2 slots, configurable as RAID 5
• Dual 5GbE networking

TerraMaster F4-425 Pro Cons

• M.2 slots limited to PCIe 3.0 x1
• Single, non-ECC memory slot
• HDMI is management-only, not for media playback

Rating: 4 out of 5

The TerraMaster F4-425 Pro is a solid piece of hardware, that performs well enough. The RAM is a constraint, but only if you’re planning on running a lot of services from the box.

It’s not the fastest NAS, it doesn’t have the largest potential capacity of units we’ve reviewed. What it does is deliver a solid hardware and software package at a fair price, with no roadblocks for Apple hardware users.

Where to buy the TerraMaster F4-425 Pro

The TerraMaster F4-425 Pro is priced at $639.99 from TerraMaster’s online store with 16GB of memory, down 20% from $799.99. Its 8GB memory variant is available for $559.99, again discounted from $699.99.

It is also available from Amazon, with the 8GB at $699.99 and the 16GB at $799.99. Again, a 20% coupon is available at the time of publication, making the prices comparable to TerraMaster’s online store.

Tencent is seeking up to $1.6bn by selling down its stake in short-video platform Kuaishou, Bloomberg reports. A term sheet seen by Reuters puts the block trade at up to $1.55bn.

The deal covers about 273 million shares, a 7.5% stake, offered at HK$43.15 to HK$44.53 each. That represents a discount of 3.2% to 6.2% to Monday’s close in Hong Kong.

The sale cuts Tencent’s holding in its long-time ally from 15.68% to about 9.37%, and Kuaishou confirmed the off-market disposal in an exchange filing. Kuaishou has meanwhile pressed ahead with its own share buybacks.

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Tencent has form here, having trimmed or distributed stakes in JD.com and Meituan in recent years when it judged the holdings mature. It remains one of the most consequential balance sheets in Chinese tech.

Selling the app, backing the AI

The timing is pointed, since the selldown comes shortly after Tencent joined a $2.8bn financing for Kling AI, Kuaishou’s generative video unit. Kling raised an initial $2bn as Kuaishou spun it off at a valuation of about $18bn.

That round became a geopolitical flashpoint when General Atlantic sought to lead it just as Beijing pushed its AI firms to refuse US money. Chinese investors, Tencent among them, filled the gap.

The trade reads as a rotation out of the mature short-video business and into the AI layer growing on top of it. Kuaishou’s home market is fertile ground, with China’s $16.5bn micro-drama industry becoming the first mass application of AI-generated video.

Tencent’s ties to Kuaishou stretch back through years of jointly fighting ByteDance for short-video attention. And it has plenty of other calls on its capital, including a reported $3bn domestic memory deal with CXMT as it builds out AI infrastructure.

For Kuaishou, a shrinking anchor investor stings less when that investor is simultaneously funding its future. Tencent is not leaving the table, it is changing seats.

Vertere has upgraded its Phono-1 phono preamp line with the $2,399 Phono-1 LX, a new MM/MC phono stage that replaces the Phono-1 MKII L. The core RIAA circuit remains intact, but the supporting hardware has been given serious attention: a revised gold-plated PCB, upgraded internal DC power supply, improved AC input filtering, and a simpler two-way earthing switch. None of that sounds especially glamorous until you remember that a phono cartridge produces a microscopic signal and every bit of hum, RF interference, or power-supply noise is waiting nearby with a sharpened knife.

Founded in the UK by Roksan co-founder Touraj Moghaddam, Vertere has built its reputation around treating analog playback as a chain of mechanical and electrical problems worth solving properly. eCoustics’ coverage of the Vertere DG-X turntable found the same approach in its motor drive, bearing, power supply, and resonance-control work. The Phono-1 LX applies that philosophy to the space between cartridge and amplifier, where quieter power, better grounding, and more careful filtering can matter as much as the turntable itself.

Related Reviews: Muarah MU-2 Phono Preamplifier Review: The Audiophile System Builder

Connections: The Phono-1 LX keeps connectivity relatively simple, with single-ended RCA inputs, stereo RCA line outputs, and grounding terminals. It supports both moving magnet and moving coil cartridges, but there are no balanced XLR outputs. At this price, that will feel like a missed opportunity for listeners whose preamplifiers or integrated amplifiers offer balanced inputs. Vertere has clearly prioritized cartridge matching and noise control over connection flexibility.

Earthing Switch: Vertere has replaced the previous grounding arrangement with a new two-way earthing switch that toggles between “Earth Lift” and “Earth Connection.” The company says the revised design is easier to operate and intended to provide a longer service life, while giving owners a straightforward way to address grounding issues within their own system.

Clean and Silent Power: The Phono-1 LX uses a revised AC input with additional filtering intended to prevent high-frequency and RF interference from entering the circuit. That works alongside an upgraded internal DC power supply designed to deliver cleaner, more consistent power to the phono stage. Vertere says the result is a quieter background and greater access to low-level detail buried in the groove.

Internal Circuitry: A new gold-plated PCB is intended to improve soldering consistency and long-term reliability across the circuit. Better construction and more careful grounding are exactly the kind of details that matter when a phono stage is amplifying an extremely low-level cartridge signal.

Cartridge Matching: The Phono-1 LX offers 10 gain settings, 15 resistance values, and nine capacitance options for more precise matching with moving magnet and moving coil cartridges. That gives owners meaningful flexibility when changing cartridges or dialing in an existing setup.

Power Indicator: The Phono-1 LX adds a blue-green power indicator LED that visually aligns it with the Vertere DG X, Tempo, Imperium, and CALON. It is a small detail, but it gives the phono stage a more consistent identity within the wider Vertere range.

Chassis and Cover: Vertere has fitted the Phono-1 LX with a new cover finished in fine-textured metallic silver. The update gives the unit a more refined appearance and a more tactile finish than the earlier model. Vertere has also eliminated the four top-mounted fixing screws, creating a cleaner, uninterrupted surface that brings the design closer to the company’s CALON phono preamplifier.

Comparison

The Bottom Line 

The Vertere Phono-1 LX is not aimed at casual vinyl listeners looking to replace the phono input inside an affordable integrated amplifier. At $2,399, it is intended for high performance analog systems with a turntable, tonearm, and cartridge capable of exposing the benefits of lower noise, more precise loading, and better system grounding.

Its strongest appeal will be to owners of Vertere turntables such as the DG X and DG-1S, particularly those using the company’s XtraX moving coil or Dark Sabre moving magnet cartridges. The broader adjustment range should also make it a credible option for listeners using cartridges from other manufacturers, provided the rest of the system is sufficiently revealing. The Phono-1 LX is less about adding a long list of headline features than refining the electrical environment around a very small cartridge signal.

The competition is not gentle. The $2,495 MoFi UltraPhono Pro offers front-panel gain and loading controls, balanced and single-ended outputs, a mono switch, subsonic filter, and a more overtly feature-rich approach. The $2,899 Cyrus 40 PPA goes further still with four configurable inputs, balanced and RCA outputs, remote control, level meters, a warp filter, and an optional external power-supply upgrade. Gold Note’s PH-10 is another serious rival for listeners who want balanced outputs, selectable EQ curves, and two independently configurable inputs.

The Muarah MU-2 remains the more characterful alternative for listeners who want tube-based circuitry, easy loading changes, and a fuller, warmer tonal balance. Its RCA-only connections and lower 56dB MC gain, however, make it a less natural fit for very low-output moving coil cartridges.

Price & Availability

The Vertere Phono-1 LX comes in four finishes: silver, orange, black, and black acrylic, with a price of $2,399 (£1650 / AU$3250) through Authorized Dealers.

For more information: vertereacoustics.com

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I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to portable charging. I love testing the many power banks, USB-C chargers and newer Amazon brands available to see whether they can really do what they claim, and how well they hold up day to day.

Since most of us need a spare power bank, wall charger or cable sooner or later, these products are always worth checking during Amazon’s Prime Day sales.

With Prime Day 2026 now underway in Australia, I’ve rounded up my favourite power bank and charger deals below.

Many of these are the same models I recommend in my best power banks guide, including picks from Iniu, Anker, ZMI, Ugreen and more.

Based on my testing, there are also a few Amazon charging brands I’d be cautious about — including Veektomx, Charmast and Heymix — with the latter having some rather worrying reviews.

All the deals below are Exclusive Prime prices, so if you don’t have membership already, sign up now and get a 30-day free trial that you can cancel any time.

Best Prime Day power bank deals

Fortunately, it shouldn’t take too much extra space.

Science

Department of Energy, Cleveland Clinic, and IBM simulate a soup of molten salts and techno babble in pursuit of tritium

Fusion energy has presented a tantalizing alternative to fossil fuels for the better part of a century, but creating the equivalent of a human-made sun is easier said than done.

However, new research from the boffins at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the Cleveland Clinic, and IBM in support of the Department of Energy’s (DoE) Genesis Mission suggests quantum computers and perhaps a sprinkle of AI could be what the world needs to get fusion power running at scale.

Specifically, researchers are looking to quantum processing units (QPUs), like those built by IBM, to find optimal materials to extract the tritium fuel required by some of the most promising reactor designs.

On Earth, tritium, a radioactive hydrogen isotope with one proton and two neutrons, is fleetingly rare. Before we can harness fusion to produce energy at scale, we need to figure out a way to mass produce the stuff.

According to researchers, molten salts containing a mixture of fluorine, lithium, and beryllium (FLiBe), are one of the more promising candidates for extracting tritium for use in fusion reactors.

The idea is that these molten salts, which have historically been used in experimental fission reactors as a coolant, function as a breeder environment for tritium. The trick, as you might expect, is predicting the electronic ground-state energies of FLiBe molecular clusters to better understand how they bind tritium. This is no easy task.

These calculations are extremely computationally expensive and prone to error. But as it happens, one of the applications quantum computers have shown the most promise with is optimization and computational chemistry problems.

Developing the quantum algorithms necessary to do this isn’t easy, but researchers won’t stop trying to solve it. As it turns out, the same techniques used by the Cleveland Clinic to simulate 12,635-atom proteins can be applied to FLiBe sims.

The process involves using QPUs as an accelerator, similar to how GPUs are used in supercomputers and AI clusters today to perform calculations not easily performed on conventional hardware.

In a blog post, IBM explains that parts of the problem are broken down into quantum circuits which can be solved by the QPU. “This allowed the team to more precisely determine the electronic structure of the material and how its atoms behave, particularly how strongly they bind tritium at the fundamental molecular level.”

By combining CPUs, GPUs, and QPUs, the researchers say they were able to identify nine potential cluster configurations for producing the tritium fuel needed by fusion reactor designs.

“These results add to mounting evidence that quantum-centric supercomputing is now a practical scientific tool for problems that have long challenged chemists, engineers, and materials scientists,” Jerry Chow, CTO of quantum-centric supercomputing at IBM, said in a statement.

While quantum computing may show promise, this isn’t a silver bullet to realizing the potential of fusion power. Despite the progress made in recent years toward the development of a self-sustaining fusion reactor, it seems we’ve still got a ways to go. ®