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One of the secrets to building the worlds most powerful computer is probably perched by your bathroom sink.

At IBMs Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York States Westchester County, scientists always keep a box of dental flossReach is the preferred brandclose by in case they need to tinker with their oil-drum-size quantum computers, the latest of which can complete certain tasks millions of times as fast as your laptop.

Inside the shimmering aluminum canister of IBMs System One, which sits shielded by the same kind of protective glass as the Mona Lisa, are three cylinders of diminishing circumference, rather like a set of Russian dolls. Together, these encase a chandelier of looping silver wires that cascade through chunky gold plates to a quantum chip in the base. To work properly, this chip requires super-cooling to 0.015 kelvinsa smidgen above absolute zero and colder than outer space. Most materials contract or grow brittle and snap under such intense chill. But ordinary dental floss, it turns out, maintains its integrity remarkably well if you need to secure wayward wires.

But only the unwaxed, unflavored kind, says Jay Gambetta, IBMs vice president of quantum. Otherwise, released vapors mess everything up.

Photograph by Thomas Prior for TIME

Buy a print of the Quantum cover here

Its a curiously homespun facet of a technology that is set to transform pretty much everything. Quantums unique ability to crunch stacks of data is already optimizing the routes of thousands of fuel tankers traversing the globe, helping decide which ICU patients require the most urgent care, and mimicking chemical processes at the atomic level to better design new materials. It also promises to supercharge artificial intelligence, with the power to better train algorithms that can finally turn driverless cars and drone taxis into a reality. Quantum AI simulations exhibit a degree of effectiveness and efficiency that is mind-boggling, U.S. National Cyber Director Chris Inglis tells TIME.

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Quantums earliest adopters are asset-management firmsfor which incorporating quantum calculations involves few increased overhead costsbut commercial uses arent far behind. Spanish firm Multiverse Computing has run successful pilot projects with multinational clients like BASF and Bosch that show its quantum algorithms can double foreign-exchange trading profits and catch almost four times as many production-line defects. Quantum deep-learning algorithms are completely different from classical ones, says Multiverse CEO Enrique Lizaso Olmos. You can train them faster, try more strategies, and they are much better at getting the correlations that matter from a lot of data.

Quantum chandeliers may look spectacular but they arent practical for next generation computers. IBM has instead designed flexible cabling to replace the looped wires.

Thomas Prior for TIME

Data received from quantum computers must be fed to rack of classical control electronic systems to process the calculations.

Thomas Prior for TIME

Tech giants from Google to Amazon and Alibabanot to mention nation-states vying for technological supremacyare racing to dominate this space. The global quantum-computing industry is projected to grow from $412 million in 2020 to $8.6 billion in 2027, according to an International Data Corp. analysis.

Whereas traditional computers rely on binary bitsswitches either on or off, denoted as 1s and 0sto process information, the qubits that underpin quantum computing are tiny subatomic particles that can exist in some percentage of both states simultaneously, rather like a coin spinning in midair. This leap from dual to multivariate processing exponentially boosts computing power. Complex problems that currently take the most powerful supercomputer several years could potentially be solved in seconds. Future quantum computers could open hitherto unfathomable frontiers in mathematics and science, helping to solve existential challenges like climate change and food security. A flurry of recent breakthroughs and government investment means we now sit on the cusp of a quantum revolution. I believe we will do more in the next five years in quantum innovation than we did in the last 30, says Gambetta.

But any disrupter comes with risks, and quantum has become a national-security migraine. Its problem-solving capacity will soon render all existing cryptography obsolete, jeopardizing communications, financial transactions, and even military defenses. People describe quantum as a new space race, says Dan OShea, operations manager for Inside Quantum Technology, an industry publication. In October, U.S. President Joe Biden toured IBMs quantum data center in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., calling quantum vital to our economy and equally important to our national security. In this new era of great-power competition, China and the U.S. are particularly hell-bent on conquering the technology lest they lose vital ground. This technology is going to be the next industrial revolution, says Tony Uttley, president and COO for Quantinuum, a Colorado-based firm that offers commercial quantum applications. Its like the beginning of the internet, or the beginning of classical computing.

Quantum chips are extremely sensitive. This decade-old IBM quantum processor was used in an experiment that proved how background microwaves affect qubits.

Thomas Prior for TIME

If anything, its surprising that traditional computing has taken us so far. From the trail-blazing Apple II of the late 1970s to todays smartphones and supercomputers, all processors break down tasks into binary. But life is so complex that rendering information in such a rudimentary manner is like playing a Rachmaninoff concerto in Morse code.

Quantum is also more in tune with nature. Moleculesthe building blocks of the universeare multiple atoms bound together by electrons that exist as part of each. The way these electrons essentially occupy two states at once is what quantum particles replicate, presenting applications for natural and material sciences by predicting how drugs interact with the human body, or substances perform under corrosion. Traditional manufacturing takes calculated guesses to make breakthroughs through trial and error; by mirroring the natural world, quantum should allow advances to be purposefully designed.

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While the worlds biggest companies, alongside hundreds of startups, are clamoring to harness quantum, IBM has emerged in recent years as the industry leader. Today, the firm has over 60 functioning quantum computersmore than the rest of the world combinedand a roster of collaborators that include titans of practically every industry from Exxon-Mobil to Sony. Its a welcome return to technologys zenith for the storied firm, founded over a century ago to produce tabulating machines fed with punch cards. In recent years, IBM had fallen behind rivals like Apple and Microsoft by not seizing the initiative with cloud computing and AI. Quantum offers some redemption. Its great to be back at the top again, says one executive. Its no secret that we let things slip by not jumping on cloud.

In November, IBM unveiled its new 433-qubit Osprey chipthe worlds most powerful quantum processor, the speed of which, if represented in traditional bits, would far exceed the total number of atoms in the known universe. IBM has more than 20 quantum computers available on its open-source quantum tool kit Qiskit, which has been downloaded more than 450,000 times to date. In order to build an industry around quantum, some machines are free to use, while paying clients such as startups and scholars can access more powerful ones remotely on a lease basis. IBM has a bold road map to launch a 1,121-qubit processor this year and, by 2025, surpass 4,000 qubits by creating modular quantum circuits that link multiple processor chips in the same computer. Modularity is a big inflection point, says Dario Gil, IBM senior vice president and director of research. We now have a way to engineer machines that will have tens of thousands of qubits.

Inside the IBM research lab in Yorktown Heights, New York

Thomas Prior for TIME

IBM research lab in Yorktown Heights, New York.

Thomas Prior for TIME

Quantums industrial uses are boundless. Inside BMWs headquarters in Munich there stands a wall that gives vehicle designers sleepless nights. Creating a new car model from scratch takes at least four years. First, designers use computer-aided styling to sketch an exterior that combines beauty with practicality. Next, a scale model is carved in clay and placed in a wind tunnel to assess aerodynamics. After countless decisions on interior, engine performance, and so on comes the ultimate test: a prototype is driven at 35 m.p.h. into that fabled wall to test how it performs in a crash. Should the car fail to meet various safety criteria, its back to the drawing board.

This is where quantum can help by accurately predicting how complex materials of different shapes will perform under stress. Robust simulated crash tests can save up to six months in the whole process, says Carsten Sapia, vice president of strategy, governance, and IT security at BMW Group, which has partnered with French quantum firm Pasqal. Quantum computing will also help us find the new optimum between design, maximum interior space, and best aerodynamics.

Thats just the start. Modern business teems with optimization problems that are ideally suited to quantum algorithms and could save time, energy, and resources. Were not just building the technology, we have to enable the workforce to use it, explains Katie Pizzolato, IBMs director of quantum strategy and applications research.

Sapia says finding uses for the technology is easy; the challenge will be ensuring that all divisions of BMW are able to utilize it. Already, BMW is unable to communicate from Europe to its cars in China for driving software maintenance and monitoring because of increasingly strict curbs on the transfer of data across borders. In the future, we will rely on everywhere in the world having access to quantum technology to run our business, Sapia says. So how can we set it up so no matter what happens on a geopolitical scale that we still have access to this technology?

The full chandelier inside a quantum computer.

Thomas Prior for TIME

Over the past few years quantum has moved from a footnote to the top of the global security agenda. To date, 17 countries have national quantum strategies and four more are developing them. China has invested an estimated $25 billion in quantum research since the mid-1980s, according to Quantum Computing Report. Its top quantum scientist, Pan Jianwei, led the launch of the worlds first quantum satellite in 2016 and in 2021 unveiled a then record-breaking 56-qubit quantum computer. Chinas 14th Five-Year Plan, published in March 2021, made mastery of quantum a policy priority. The blurred line between industry and national security in China gives them an advantage, says David Spirk, former chief data officer at the Department of Defense.

In response, the White House in May published a National Security Memorandum that ordered all federal agencies to transition to post-quantum security owing to significant risks to economic and national security. Given that upgrading critical infrastructure can take decades, and literally everything connected to the internet is at risk, the impetus is to act now. We realized that while [quantum is] wonderful for humanity, the first thing people are going to do is weaponize these systems, says Skip Sanzeri, founder and COO of QuSecure, a post-quantum cybersecurity firm enlisted by the U.S. military and federal government to handle what he says could be a $1 trillion cybersecurity upgrade.

Still, Spirk worries that the U.S. risks falling behind and is calling for a Manhattan Projectlike focus on quantum. Of the over $30 billion spent globally on quantum last year, according to the World Economic Forum, China accounted for roughly half and the E.U. almost a quarter. The U.S. National Quantum Initiative, meanwhile, spent just $1.2 billiona figure Spirk calls trivial against $1 trillion in total defense spending. This is not a coming wave, he says, its here.

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The stakes couldnt be higher. Today, practically all cybersecuritywhether WhatsApp messages, bank transfers, or digital handshakesis based on RSA, an asymmetric cryptography algorithm used to safely transfer data. But while a regular computer needs billions of years to crack RSA, a fast quantum computer would take just hours. In December, a team of scientists in China published a paper that claimed it had a quantum algorithm that could break RSA with a 372-qubit computer (though its conclusions are hotly debated). The race is now on to devise postquantum securitya job that falls to the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST. In 2016, NIST announced a competition for programmers to propose new post-quantum encryption algorithms. The results were mixed: one of the finalists announced on July 5, 2022, has since been cracked by a regular laptop in a little over an hour.

In some ways, its already too late. Even though quantum computers powerful enough to crack RSA are a few years away from being openly available, hackers are already seizing and storing sensitive data in the knowledge that they will be able to access it via quantum very soon. Every day that you dont convert to a quantum-safe protocol, theres no recovery plan, Gil says.

The glass shell around the quantum computer allows IBM to tightly control the temperature inside. This is critical for the quantum chip, which has to be kept at a fraction above absolute zero.

Thomas Prior for TIME

The war in Ukraine has also served as a wake-up call. It is historys first hot conflict to begin with cyber-attacks, as Russia targeted vital -communications and infrastructure to lay the groundwork for its military assault. Public services, energy grids, media, banks, businesses, and nonprofit organizations were subjected to a cyberblitzkrieg, impacting the distribution of medicines, food, and relief supplies. Modern warfare and nationalsecurity mechanisms are grounded in the speed and precision of decisionmaking. If your computer is faster than theirs, you win, its pretty simple, says Spirk. Quantum is that next leap.

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But malign intentions are just one hazard. With the U.S. embroiled in a new Cold War, its also unclear if China and Russia would adopt new NIST protocols, not least since in the past, RSA cryptography has allegedly been breached by the U.S. National Security Agency. In September, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said quantum would have an outsized importance over the coming decade, adding that export controls could be used to maintain U.S. advantage. Competing post-quantum security standards across Washingtons and Beijings spheres of influence have the potential to cleave the world into divergent blocs, with grave implications for global trade. [The] balkanization of what we know today as a free and open internet is distinctly possible, Inglis says.

The trepidation surrounding quantum doesnt stem solely from security risks. We trust classical computers in part because we can verify their computations with pen and paper. But quantum computers involve such arcane physics, and deal with such complex problems, that traditional verification is extremely tricky. For now, its possible to simulate many quantum calculations on a traditional super-computer to check the outcome. But soon will come a time when trusting a quantum computer will require a leap of faith. Trust building across the entire ecosystem right now is really important, says Uttley.

Boeing, for one, has been working with IBMs quantum team since 2020 on designing new materials for its next generation of aircraft. But given the colossal reputational stakes, the firm is in no rush. The modeling tools that we use to design our airplanes are closely monitored, says Jay Lowell, chief engineer for disruptive computing and networks at Boeing. To turn [quantum] into an operational code is a huge, huge hurdle.

One that IBM knows only too well. But by making its quantum computers open source, and welcoming academics and entrepreneurs from all over, the firm hopes to mitigate the hesitancy. As Gil puts it, this is a new frontier of humanity.

With reporting by Leslie Dickstein

Correction, Jan. 28

The original version of this story misstated the name of a French quantum firm. It is Pasqal, not Pascal.

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Write to Charlie Campbell at charlie.campbell@time.com.

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Quantum Could Solve Countless ProblemsAnd Create New Ones | Time

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Quantum computing is an idea that has long been in the realm of science fiction. However, recent developments have made it seem more and more like a reality.

The rise of easily accessible quantum computing has significant implications for the tech industry and the world as a whole. With potential impacts in things like cybersecurity, simulations and more, investors are watching this industry closely (and getting invested).

Quantum computing relies on quantum mechanics, a fundamental theory of physics that describes how the world works at the level of the atom and subatomic particles, to solve problems that traditional computers find too complex.

Most quantum computers rely on the quantum bit or qubit. Unlike traditional bits in a computer, which are set to 0 or 1, qubits can be set to zero, one or a superposition of 0 and 1. Though the mechanics behind this is highly complex, qubits allow quantum computers to process information in a fraction of the time a traditional computer could.

To offer an idea of the scale, 500 qubits can represent the same information as 2^500 normal bits. While a typical computer would need millions of years to find all the prime factors of a 2,048-bit number (a number with 617 digits), a quantum computer can do the job in minutes.

Modern quantum theory was developed in the 1920s. Computers appeared shortly after that, and both technologies played a role in World War II. Over time, physicists began to merge the two fields of quantum theory and computing to create the field of quantum computing.

1998 saw the development of a two-bit quantum computer, which serves as a proof of concept for the technology. Further developments have increased the bit count and reduced the rate of errors.

Researchers believe that problems currently too large to be solved by traditional computers can be solved using quantum computers.

Given the substantial improvements that quantum computing can provide to computing power, research into quantum computers has been going on for decades. However, important breakthroughs have been seen in recent years.

Last week, Australian engineers announced the discovery of a way to control electrons within quantum dots that run logic gates without the need for a large, bulky system. This could help with building quantum computers that are reasonably sized.

Also, researchers at MIT recently developed an architecture for quantum computers that will allow for high-fidelity communication between quantum processors, allowing for the interconnection of multiple processors.

This allows for modular implementations of larger-scale machines built from smaller individual components, according to Bharath Kanna, a co-lead author of the research paper describing this breakthrough.

The ability to communicate between smaller subsystems will enable a modular architecture for quantum processors, and this may be a simpler way of scaling to larger system sizes compared to the brute-force approach of using a single large and complicated chip.

Furthermore, a Maryland-based company IonQ recently announced a 65,000-square-foot facility that it will use for manufacturing and production. The factory will be located in Bothell, WA and is the first dedicated quantum computer manufacturing facility in the United States.

Quantum computing could have massive impacts on the tech industry and the world.

One of the biggest impacts will be in the world of cybersecurity. The Department of Homeland Security believes that a quantum computer could be able to break current encryption methods as soon as 2030.

Without major developments in cryptography or a slowdown in quantum computing technology advances, we could be less than a decade away from malicious actors being able to view everything from peoples personal information to government and military secrets.

Some groups are already participating in Store Now, Decrypt Later attacks, which steal encrypted data and store it with the expectation that theyll be able to crack the encryption at a later date.

Quantum computing could also have major effects on the medical industry. For example, quantum machines could be used to model molecular processes. This could assist with breakthroughs in disease research and speed up the development of life-saving drugs.

These simulations could have similar impacts in industries that rely on materials science, such as battery making. Even the financial sector could benefit from the technology, using simulations to perform risk analysis more accurately and optimize investment portfolios.

Given its world-changing capabilities, its no surprise that governments have made major investments in the technology, with more than $30 billion going into research programs across the globe.

Quantum computing has the potential to impact almost every industry across the globe. Beyond impacting the tech industry, it could create shockwaves in the medical and financial industry while leading to the development of new products or materials that become a part of everyday life.

Given the relative youth of the technology, it can be challenging for investors to find ways to invest directly in quantum computing. Instead, they may look for investments in businesses that have an interest in quantum computers and that are poised to benefit from their development, such as pharmaceutical companies.

The rise of quantum computing could mean that the world will look very different just a few years from now. Investors will be looking for ways to profit from this game-changing technology, and the opportunities will be plentiful.

If you want to try a different type of high-tech investing, consider working with Q.ai. Its artificial intelligence can help you build a portfolio for any purpose that will succeed in any economy. With Investment Kits, Q.ai makes investing fun.

Download Q.ai today for access to AI-powered investment strategies.

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Quantum Computing Is Coming, And Its Reinventing The Tech Industry

They wont wipe out conventional computers, though. Using a classical machine will still be the easiest and most economical solution for tackling most problems. But quantum computers promise to power exciting advances in various fields, from materials science to pharmaceuticals research. Companies are already experimenting with them to develop things like lighter and more powerful batteries for electric cars, and to help create novel drugs.

The secret to a quantum computers power lies in its ability to generate and manipulate quantum bits, or qubits.

Today's computers use bitsa stream of electrical or optical pulses representing1s or0s. Everything from your tweets and e-mails to your iTunes songs and YouTube videos are essentially long strings of these binary digits.

Quantum computers, on the other hand, usequbits, whichare typically subatomic particles such as electrons or photons. Generating and managing qubits is a scientific and engineering challenge. Some companies, such as IBM, Google, and Rigetti Computing, use superconducting circuits cooled to temperatures colder than deep space. Others, like IonQ, trap individual atoms in electromagnetic fields on a silicon chip in ultra-high-vacuum chambers. In both cases, the goal is to isolate the qubits in a controlled quantum state.

Qubits have some quirky quantum properties that mean a connected group of them can provide way more processing power than the same number of binary bits. One of those properties is known as superposition and another is called entanglement.

Qubits can represent numerous possible combinations of 1and 0 at the same time. This ability to simultaneously be in multiple states is called superposition. To put qubits into superposition, researchers manipulate them using precision lasers or microwave beams.

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Explainer: What is a quantum computer? | MIT Technology Review

Twenty-seven years before Steve Jobs unveiled a computer you could put in your pocket, physicist Paul Benioff published a paper showing it was theoretically possible to build a much more powerful system you could hide in a thimble a quantum computer.

Named for the subatomic physics it aimed to harness, the concept Benioff described in 1980 still fuels research today, including efforts to build the next big thing in computing: a system that could make a PC look in some ways quaint as an abacus.

Richard Feynman a Nobel Prize winner whose wit-laced lectures brought physics to a broad audience helped establish the field, sketching out how such systems could simulate quirky quantum phenomena more efficiently than traditional computers. So,

Quantum computing is a sophisticated approach to making parallel calculations, using the physics that governs subatomic particles to replace the more simplistic transistors in todays computers.

Quantum computers calculate using qubits, computing units that can be on, off or any value between, instead of the bits in traditional computers that are either on or off, one or zero. The qubits ability to live in the in-between state called superposition adds a powerful capability to the computing equation, making quantum computers superior for some kinds of math.

Using qubits, quantum computers could buzz through calculations that would take classical computers a loooong time if they could even finish them.

For example, todays computers use eight bits to represent any number between 0 and 255. Thanks to features like superposition, a quantum computer can use eight qubits to represent every number between 0 and 255, simultaneously.

Its a feature like parallelism in computing: All possibilities are computed at once rather than sequentially, providing tremendous speedups.

So, while a classical computer steps through long division calculations one at a time to factor a humongous number, a quantum computer can get the answer in a single step. Boom!

That means quantum computers could reshape whole fields, like cryptography, that are based on factoring what are today impossibly large numbers.

That could be just the start. Some experts believe quantum computers will bust through limits that now hinder simulations in chemistry, materials science and anything involving worlds built on the nano-sized bricks of quantum mechanics.

Quantum computers could even extend the life of semiconductors by helping engineers create more refined simulations of the quantum effects theyre starting to find in todays smallest transistors.

Indeed, experts say quantum computers ultimately wont replace classical computers, theyll complement them. And some predict quantum computers will be used as accelerators much as GPUs accelerate todays computers.

Dont expect to build your own quantum computer like a DIY PC with parts scavenged from discount bins at the local electronics shop.

The handful of systems operating today typically require refrigeration that creates working environments just north of absolute zero. They need that computing arctic to handle the fragile quantum states that power these systems.

In a sign of how hard constructing a quantum computer can be, one prototype suspends an atom between two lasers to create a qubit. Try that in your home workshop!

Quantum computing takes nano-Herculean muscles to create something called entanglement. Thats when two or more qubits exist in a single quantum state, a condition sometimes measured by electromagnetic waves just a millimeter wide.

Crank up that wave with a hair too much energy and you lose entanglement or superposition, or both. The result is a noisy state called decoherence, the equivalent in quantum computing of the blue screen of death.

A handful of companies such as Alibaba, Google, Honeywell, IBM, IonQ and Xanadu operate early versions of quantum computers today.

Today they provide tens of qubits. But qubits can be noisy, making them sometimes unreliable. To tackle real-world problems reliably, systems need tens or hundreds of thousands of qubits.

Experts believe it could be a couple decades before we get to a high-fidelity era when quantum computers are truly useful.

Predictions of when we reach so-called quantum computing supremacy the time when quantum computers execute tasks classical ones cant is a matter of lively debate in the industry.

The good news is the world of AI and machine learning put a spotlight on accelerators like GPUs, which can perform many of the types of operations quantum computers would calculate with qubits.

So, classical computers are already finding ways to host quantum simulations with GPUs today. For example, NVIDIA ran a leading-edge quantum simulation on Selene, our in-house AI supercomputer.

NVIDIA announced in the GTC keynote the cuQuantum SDK to speed quantum circuit simulations running on GPUs. Early work suggests cuQuantum will be able to deliver orders of magnitude speedups.

The SDK takes an agnostic approach, providing a choice of tools users can pick to best fit their approach. For example, the state vector method provides high-fidelity results, but its memory requirements grow exponentially with the number of qubits.

That creates a practical limit of roughly 50 qubits on todays largest classical supercomputers. Nevertheless weve seen great results (below) using cuQuantum to accelerate quantum circuit simulations that use this method.

Researchers from the Jlich Supercomputing Centre will provide a deep dive on their work with the state vector method in session E31941 at GTC (free with registration).

A newer approach, tensor network simulations, use less memory and more computation to perform similar work.

Using this method, NVIDIA and Caltech accelerated a state-of-the-art quantum circuit simulator with cuQuantum running on NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs. It generated a sample from a full-circuit simulation of the Google Sycamore circuit in 9.3 minutes on Selene, a task that 18 months ago experts thought would take days using millions of CPU cores.

Using the Cotengra/Quimb packages, NVIDIAs newly announced cuQuantum SDK, and the Selene supercomputer, weve generated a sample of the Sycamore quantum circuit at depth m=20 in record time less than 10 minutes, said Johnnie Gray, a research scientist at Caltech.

This sets the benchmark for quantum circuit simulation performance and will help advance the field of quantum computing by improving our ability to verify the behavior of quantum circuits, said Garnet Chan, a chemistry professor at Caltech whose lab hosted the work.

NVIDIA expects the performance gains and ease of use of cuQuantum will make it a foundational element in every quantum computing framework and simulator at the cutting edge of this research.

Sign up to show early interest in cuQuantum.

Learn more about quantum computing on the NVIDIA Technical Blog.

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What Is Quantum Computing? | NVIDIA Blog

For years, quantum computings news cycle was dominated by headlines about record-setting systems. Researchers at Google and IBM have had spats over who achieved whatand whether it was worth the effort. But the time for arguing over whos got the biggest processor seems to have passed: firms are heads-down and preparing for life in the real world. Suddenly, everyone is behaving like grown-ups.

As if to emphasize how much researchers want to get off the hype train, IBM is expected to announce a processor in 2023 that bucks the trend of putting ever more quantum bits, or qubits, into play. Qubits, the processing units of quantum computers, can be built from a variety of technologies, including superconducting circuitry, trapped ions, and photons, the quantum particles of light.

IBM has long pursued superconducting qubits, and over the years the company has been making steady progress in increasing the number it can pack on a chip. In 2021, for example, IBM unveiled one with a record-breaking 127 of them. In November, it debuted its 433-qubit Osprey processor, and the company aims to release a 1,121-qubit processor called Condor in 2023.

But this year IBM is also expected to debut its Heron processor, which will have just 133 qubits. It might look like a backwards step, but as the company is keen to point out, Herons qubits will be of the highest quality. And, crucially, each chip will be able to connect directly to other Heron processors, heralding a shift from single quantum computing chips toward modular quantum computers built from multiple processors connected togethera move that is expected to help quantum computers scale up significantly.

Heron is a signal of larger shifts in the quantum computing industry. Thanks to some recent breakthroughs, aggressive roadmapping, and high levels of funding, we may see general-purpose quantum computers earlier than many would have anticipated just a few years ago, some experts suggest. Overall, things are certainly progressing at a rapid pace, says Michele Mosca, deputy director of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo.

Here are a few areas where experts expect to see progress.

IBMs Heron project is just a first step into the world of modular quantum computing. The chips will be connected with conventional electronics, so they will not be able to maintain the quantumness of information as it moves from processor to processor. But the hope is that such chips, ultimately linked together with quantum-friendly fiber-optic or microwave connections, will open the path toward distributed, large-scale quantum computers with as many as a million connected qubits. That may be how many are needed to run useful, error-corrected quantum algorithms. We need technologies that scale both in size and in cost, so modularity is key, says Jerry Chow, director at IBMQuantum Hardware System Development.

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What's next for quantum computing | MIT Technology Review