The slow crawl of quantum computing has made some significant leaps of late. First there was a trio of papers published in recent weeks that pushed forward the ongoing efforts toward “error correction,” or the process by which quantum computers overcome the glitches that occur when their extremely sensitive quantum states are threatened. Then yesterday, Microsoft and quantum firm Quantinuum announced a breakthrough in demonstrating “logical qubits,” showing that workarounds are possible to help build usable quantum computers today. And tomorrow, IBM and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will cut the ribbon on the first IBM quantum computer to be installed on a university campus. Jay Gambetta, leader of IBM’s quantum effort, told me he hopes tinkering students and researchers can push the field forward. “I don't think we should just think of this [partnership] as being limited to a single system,” said Gambetta. “It would be good to see the universities much more engaged in algorithm development, and if quantum is big as AI is there’s a lot in the future to achieve.” Quantum computing, while still a long way from everyday use, is a perfect example of the kind of technology governments across the world are hoping to foster through efforts like the CHIPS and Science Act, or the European Union’s Horizon Europe initiative: Too young and expensive to be “practical,” but utterly transformative for any nation that can manage to harness its full potential. (China has made a major push for quantum as well, accounting for half of the $30 billion spent globally on the technology, according to a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.) The U.S. is counting on projects like the IBM-RPI collaboration as a major component of its play for the future. Both institutions are part of the elegantly-named Northeast Regional Defense Technology Hub, which received $40 million in September from the Department of Defense via the CHIPS and Science Act. Even with the exciting recent quantum developments, to examine what the IBM-RPI computer will be doing is a useful reminder of how experimental the technology truly is. Gambetta told me that based on his conversations with students and faculty at RPI, a large portion of the computer’s use at first will be on “fundamental algorithm research,” or figuring out how to build for quantum computers the stable, useful algorithms of the kind we take for granted on classical computers. Only then can quantum computers be used to investigate questions in chemistry, the applied sciences, and other fields where their awesome computational potential might be brought to bear. Gambetta said that at this point in the tech’s development, there’s no replacement for working with the actual hardware, compared to emulating it as done with earlier and more experimental work. “The hard part in the quantum world is that you can't create an emulator for a [quantum processing unit] like you can create an emulator for a GPU,” he told me. “You actually have to do algorithm discovery with a quantum computer.” (Hence, the sleek-looking system display at the top of this newsletter, dropped into an old church on RPI’s campus.) Meanwhile, the Microsoft-Quantinuum news of a breakthrough in logical qubits was no less momentous. Scott Aaronson, the computer scientist and quantum researcher, blogged yesterday that the announcement shows the steady upward trajectory of quantum research, and said it “looks like it would be a surprise if we couldn’t have hundreds of fault-tolerant qubits and millions of gates on them within the next decade.” Jenni Strabley, a quantum director at Quantinuum, told Ars Technica that quantum computers’ increasing capability means that hands-on experimentation is now more necessary, and plausible, than ever. “The time of 'we can just simulate it' is — if it's not done, it's nearly done,” Strabley told the website. “There's no substitute for running these on the hardware because you're going to learn a lot.” And the results of that learning process might persuade lawmakers to spend on further breakthroughs: Although the most recent National Defense Authorization Act featured a modest suite of quantum provisions, the National Quantum Initiative, which lapsed last year, is still awaiting reauthorization.
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