Mr Viral
Despite ongoing breakthroughs, quantum computing has struggled to shake the perception that it’s always another ten years away from being practical. However, researchers at Google now argue the tech is actually much closer to commercial viability than some would have you believe.
“We’re optimistic that within five years we’ll see real-world applications that are possible only on quantum computers,” Hartmut Neven, who heads up Google’s Quantum AI division, told Reuters this week.
Neven’s predictions directly contradict those of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who earlier this year cratered quantum computing stocks after he claimed that practical quantum systems were at least two decades away.
“If you said 15 years for very useful quantum computers that would probably be on the early side,” Huang said. “If you said 30, it’s probably on the late side. If you picked 20, I think a whole bunch of us would believe it.”
Much like generative AI today, quantum computing has been the subject of considerable hype over the past few years, stemming from the technology’s potential to achieve computational power far exceeding that of conventional computers and fears it may eventually run a zipper down our best encryption algorithms.
Despite the hype, systems capable of these feats have yet to materialize. Instead, many quantum vendors have focused on narrower applications of the technology including chemistry, route optimization, logistics, and financial risk management.
Drug discovery and materials science are two of the areas Google and others aim to accelerate with quantum systems over the next few years.
One of the challenges facing quantum applications up to this point is that, as the number of qubits increases, so does the number of errors that need to be corrected.
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Google has been wrestling with this particular challenge for years and late in 2024 unveiled a new quantum computing processor that promises substantially lower error rates.
The chip, dubbed Willow, featured between 72 and 105 physical qubits arranged into two-dimensional arrays to form logical qubits capable of correcting errors before they muddy up the result. To be clear, using multiple physical qubits to achieve fault tolerance isn’t new. However, unlike prior examples, Google says it achieved exponentially low error rates as the number of qubits, and by extension its computational power, increased.
Google isn’t the only one optimistic about quantum in spite of continued skepticism around the technology’s near-term viability. Following Huang’s comments at CES last month, Quantum computing vendor D-Wave argued [PDF] that its technology is already being used commercially.
Even Intel, which continues to face financial headwinds and technological setbacks, is still clinging to the belief that its quantum computing investments will pay off eventually.
The company has reportedly entered into a collaboration with Japan’s Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) institute to develop a next-generation quantum computer that will be made available to foreign and domestic universities.
The collaboration is the latest for AIST, which is also working with IBM to build a 10,000-qubit quantum supercomputer. ®
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