There is a famous quote that says “ there are decades when nothing happens – and there are weeks where decades happen. ”
The latter occurred this week in Quantum Computing.
In conjunction with this, the following points are relevant –
1. Recognize Quantum Computing and Classical Computing are different platforms / environments – and comparing anything with a different system architecture and less than a decade old with something that has benefited from decades of maturity, familiarity, Moore’s Law, etc. is like comparing apples with oranges.
2. Quantum Computing is expected to be used for applications where its strengths apply and compliment current systems (based on binary computing) – to expand the forms of computing and respect there are different needs and opportunities.
3. Given the huge strides occurring in Quantum Computing, those that understand the nature of an emerging technology and are entrepreneurial have advantage – just like the years it took the Browser, iPhone, Windows, many new digital services, etc. to go main stream and the benefits realized by the early adopters that built new products and services based on these then new capabilities.
4. With the recent announcement by Quantinuum and Microsoft , this is an important validation that Quantum Computing is becoming an important technology strategy to make business innovation more rewarding, to create new value, and for expanding opportunities.
To explain, while Moore’s Law is impressive in terms of increasing compute capabilities over time, it pales compared to an established technology reporting an 800-x efficacy with the Microsoft / Quantinuum announcement. In this case they demonstrated the most reliable logical qubits (quantum bits, the basic unit of information in quantum computing and counterpart to the binary digit in classical computing) on record – with an error rate 800 x better than physical qubits. This is a significant achievement in the quantum ecosystem. More specifically, by applying Microsoft’s breakthrough qubit-virtualisation system to Quantinuum’s ion trap hardware, they can run more than 14,000 individual experiments – without a single error !
Many are saying this milestone moves Quantum Computing above the Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) systems to level 2 (referred to as Resilient Quantum Computing). And as reported by the Reuters News Service, the error-correction algorithm yielded about 4 reliable qubits from 30 physical ones – for the best ratio of reliable qubits from a quantum chip. Imagine an established technology reporting that kind of progress ! In the way of insight, Quantum Researchers often cite 100 reliable qubits as the number needed to beat a conventional / classical supercomputer computational abilities.
In closing, with Microsoft indicating the plans is to release the technology to its cloud computing customers in the coming months, Quantum Computing commercialization is happening ….
April 18, 2024 By Ina von Turow / CAIL CAIL Innovation commentary
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